McLuhan explains that huge changes in culture and civilization proceed from big changes in our perceptions based on changes in the media we use. So, he focuses on evidence of such change to sort of provide proof that this is how it “works”. As an example of media change driven cultural change, the first generation of kids who grew up with a TV in the house, turned out to be extremely motivated to find and create a very different sort of culture and civilization than their parents. McLuhan had much to say why that was so. He called the “new media” environment the ‘electronic information age”.
It sometimes gets overlooked in all that “went down” in the 60s, but one of the largest components of cultural change was the youth alienation from education as then practiced, with subject silos based on the literary “one at a time” perceptive mode. Whereas, after being formed by the perceptive processes used in watching TV, the youth wanted an all at once, cross-disciplinary approach, with lots of involvement and self direction in learning.
Which we’ve mostly failed all these years later to provide, although elements are there around the fringes, such as something called a “Liberal Studies” degree, and more self-directed projects etc. Now we are entering yet another huge perceptive process change with multimedia ubiquitous world-wide connectivity. Which we hope to understand somehow because the implications for learning and educational processes are stunningly comprehensive, broad, and deep. Can we do better now than the educational establishment response 50 years ago?
McLuhan also pointed to two previous dramatic culture/ civilization changes, the invention of the phonetic alphabet, which transitioned cultures that used it from the oral traditions of learning, the Homeric memorized sayings and stories that contained the culture in full, and the senses in full, to the literary learn by reading perceptive processes that “tuned out” all the senses but the visual.
Then he noted what happened when written language became widely available through inexpensive forms such as the printing press allowed. Finally he explained the era of the electronic media…and how that was conditioning culture and learning.
Today, much of what he says about electronic media makes a great deal of sense to us today, though we are moving through yet another media change. McLuhan says that’s what happens, as we aren’t aware of the new media perceptive process, but it “contains” the previous media in such a way that we can then see how the previous works..using our rear view vision, as we go forward.
What evidence might we find today in our world of huge changes in our mediated perceptive processes? Are the youth hard to understand, and seemingly living in a different world?