This audio recording of McLuhan has some technical difficulties, but still overall “good enough”, and is one of McLuhan’s more playful lectures, with, as per usual, a high rate of insights per minute.
He gets into some typical McLuhan stuff….he defines “cool”…as meaning “involved and detached at the same time, like a surgeon operating”. And goes on to say: “Western Man tends to be involved OR detached, but not both at once.”
“Cool, is identification with the creative process. When a person is both involved and detached he has to identify with the creative process. That’s a somewhat oriental concept”.
McLuhan is identifying a certain state of consciousness that might well apply today, when we are immersed in cloud spaces, and VR environments, and perhaps to certain states of consciousness “produced by” eastern practices such as meditation etc.
He also makes a point about the jobs of the future “will have much to do with Discovery”. Which in some ways sounds like our current fascination with “curation”. “The future of work is plainly “knowing” he says. He also says our sense of identity is undergoing great change, and that we might have “roles” in the future more than “jobs”.
(there’s seemingly no way to actually “summarize” McLuhan’s presentation approach…one has the tendency to want to quote every other sentence or so. Which is one of the challenges of curation, but also perhaps McLuhan’s main point. He’s a fountain of insights, but the real takeaway is the state of consciousness he’s “coming from”. If we can “get that”, then we too will have a stream of insights about what is what in our world today. Or that’s one plausible theory of the worthiness of studying McLuhan’s oeuvre.)