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Mcluhan highlights the individual human senses and their differences to illustrate why, when the alphabet came along, it laid siege on man’s mind and thus the comprehension of his world, but for early man this was a gradual process. But where from did arise this gradual siege that: opened the tribal system, denied the right brain, dominated scientific thought? It seems odd to speak of visual space as if it began to appear, suddenly, having never existed, but one way of imagining this is thinking of perspective in drawing. Prior to the 15th Century there was no real depth and perspective in drawing. Objects appeared flat and jumbled. Well, it isn’t as if people could not see, but they did not have the rules of drawing 3D space until, one person did and provided the way out. It is impossible to see beyond one’s way of doing things, but suddenly they were able. And as McLuhan points out: it is not only the discovery but the means by which to Communication between individuals in the system that makes something truly new emerge.
If we continue this thinking of the obvious advancements in technology, the Internet, mobile devices, in the 30 years since McLuhan’s death, the bubble has only gotten bigger, or has it? In an abstract sense, I can see the riots in Cairo, I know that a butterfly flapping it’s wings effects the weather across the globe, but then again, I also know that the Oil Spill in the Gulf isn’t going to have any negative impact (well, at least that is what Rush Limbaugh said).
So what’s McLuhan really saying? He seems to be talking about the radical moment of not only, as above, seeing differently, but noticing with all one’s senses the relationship and ground from which that sense does emerge and the dynamic of these relationships. Though, he overstates the left and right brain tendencies, he does have it right that they are ‘orientations.’ All of this so-called ‘left-brained’ bias thanks to a written alphabet that allowed sounds to be represented by a set number of characters, not simply scribbles that represented a thing, albeit all the likely complicated, there was a way of…becoming, something else, somehow – with this new tool.
The fact that we hear, all too often, one say: “This is my point of view, or this is my perspective” only plays into precisely what McLuhan was pointing out. How often is there a metaphor (outside of Dr. Dufour’s class) that draws on the relationship and system of sound? It’s so much easier to agree on something you can fix in time, point at, and archive on your mobile device. So where does sound come in? I mean, McLuhan said it’s making a comeback? Well, in conversation even when we do hear of such a sonic metaphor, it is too often in the new-age context when someone is talking about someone resonating with them. Or if you’re lucky, it’s a stimulating conversation and the resonance is, perhaps, really no longer an auditory one, but reminds us of the unique quality of sound – that our minds literally do resonate with sounds we hear. But, that is quite different with resonating with the ideas or principles someone is expressing. There is somehow a closeness and intimacy that comes with resonance, an internal ownership, that doesn’t necessarily come with perspective.
Perhaps this is because you can look at something from the outside, being next to another person and think you are seeing the same thing, but in fact that still tends to be followed by a conformation, using words, that two people roughly appear to be talking about the same thing. Now days we can whip out our iPhones and take pictures side-by-side… orientation from auditor to visual began – and each person can upload the image to their Twitter stream and who knows what will come of it. Or better yet, make a short video and have either person give commentary…the iPhone content seem immediate, disposable. It says ‘reality’ better than the nightly news, but it’s just a reality. A single person, communicating instantaneously around the globe often an extension of metaphors of the mind torn from being by striving, a compulsive act of becoming.
After all of this what I wonder is: What does the Internet sound like? Is it, as Clinton and McLuhan both suggest: an extension of the human nervous system? If so, what does it feel like? Sure, I can see visualizations of the Net, but when I let myself feel it, I find myself inspired to pay more attention not to the Net, but to what is actually around me, within arms reach.
Will continue to post updates as the project develops.
