Comments for Light Through McLuhan http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:15:59 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 Comment on Review: The Mechanical Bride (centennial edition) by Steve Miller http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/04/02/review-mechanical-bride/comment-page-1/#comment-8296 Steve Miller Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:15:59 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=558#comment-8296 Ordered the book/dissertation of McLuhan's two days ago. It was so easy with the info you provided. Thank you! Regarding Bion, he was one of a kind. He was Beckett's psychoanalyst. His posthumously published "Cogitations" was his end of day meditations about ideas he was thinking of and "WildThoughts" that he tried to "catch in (his) net." This document reads very similar to CtA, no center. Many analogies few deliberate metaphors. Strange language with resonant "familiar" intuitions. You can thank me later. Enjoy. I'll send you a book report on the dissertation with questions for you to answer, if you would be so kind. Ordered the book/dissertation of McLuhan’s two days ago. It was so easy with the info you provided. Thank you! Regarding Bion, he was one of a kind. He was Beckett’s psychoanalyst. His posthumously published “Cogitations” was his end of day meditations about ideas he was thinking of and “WildThoughts” that he tried to “catch in (his) net.” This document reads very similar to CtA, no center. Many analogies few deliberate metaphors. Strange language with resonant “familiar” intuitions. You can thank me later. Enjoy. I’ll send you a book report on the dissertation with questions for you to answer, if you would be so kind.

]]> Comment on Stay tuned (blog as radio?!)… by Alice Rae http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/02/25/stay-tuned-blog-as-radio/comment-page-1/#comment-7969 Alice Rae Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:24:19 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=511#comment-7969 Thank you! Reading Freud was a wonderful journey for me - an ongoing one.. I haven't read WR Bion but will look him up. McLuhan's doctoral dissertation was published as 'The Classical Trivium' by Gingko a few years ago. Definitely worth reading. Hope this helps! Alice Thank you! Reading Freud was a wonderful journey for me – an ongoing one.. I haven’t read WR Bion but will look him up. McLuhan’s doctoral dissertation was published as ‘The Classical Trivium’ by Gingko a few years ago. Definitely worth reading. Hope this helps! Alice

]]> Comment on Stay tuned (blog as radio?!)… by Steve Miller http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/02/25/stay-tuned-blog-as-radio/comment-page-1/#comment-7916 Steve Miller Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:23:21 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=511#comment-7916 Read your dissertation. Fantastic! (I am very stingy with !s. am going to read it again. You seem to appreciate Freud as much as I do. Have you read W.R. Bion? If not, check him out. Do you know where I can get a copy of McLuhan's dissertation? Read your dissertation. Fantastic! (I am very stingy with !s. am going to read it again. You seem to appreciate Freud as much as I do. Have you read W.R. Bion? If not, check him out. Do you know where I can get a copy of McLuhan’s dissertation?

]]> Comment on Review: The Mechanical Bride (centennial edition) by Alice Rae http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/04/02/review-mechanical-bride/comment-page-1/#comment-2609 Alice Rae Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:06:00 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=558#comment-2609 Wonderful link - I have never found this before! I am going to have to read it through several times.... nowhere else have I seen McLuhan refer to Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge.. a good excuse to read that now! And all the talk of 'seduction' begs a comparison with Baudrillard... thanks for posting re. the Duchamp connection, good to have it noted here. Also interesting is to read the original New York Times review of MB - http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/mcluhan-bride.html Re the Svedka robot - makes me think of the cliche-archetype rule - now that we have left the mechanical age for the electronic, the mechanical is being recycled as retro cliche... haven't read Gibson's Pattern Recognition but will now!! Wonderful link – I have never found this before! I am going to have to read it through several times…. nowhere else have I seen McLuhan refer to Foucault’s Archeology of Knowledge.. a good excuse to read that now! And all the talk of ’seduction’ begs a comparison with Baudrillard… thanks for posting re. the Duchamp connection, good to have it noted here. Also interesting is to read the original New York Times review of MB -
http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/mcluhan-bride.html
Re the Svedka robot – makes me think of the cliche-archetype rule – now that we have left the mechanical age for the electronic, the mechanical is being recycled as retro cliche… haven’t read Gibson’s Pattern Recognition but will now!!

]]> Comment on Review: The Mechanical Bride (centennial edition) by Anthony Olszewski http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/04/02/review-mechanical-bride/comment-page-1/#comment-2544 Anthony Olszewski Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:29:44 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=558#comment-2544 The Svedka female robot is McLuhan's Logo made metal: http://marketingmasterinsights.com/input/2010/10/svedka-vodka-female-robot-ads/ Gibson's Pattern Recognition serves as something of a prophet for the brand goddess. And -- as luck would have it -- the title derives from McLuhan's intro to Subliminal Seduction: “Information overload equals pattern recognition.” Media Ad-vice: An Introduction by Marshall McLuhan http://marketingmasterinsights.com/input/2012/04/information-overload-equals-pattern-recognition-media-ad-vice-introduction-marshall-mcluhan/ Though McLuhan cites IBM for the pattern recognition quote, I've not been able to find anything pointing to that Online. The Svedka female robot is McLuhan’s Logo made metal:
http://marketingmasterinsights.com/input/2010/10/svedka-vodka-female-robot-ads/

Gibson’s Pattern Recognition serves as something of a prophet for the brand goddess. And — as luck would have it — the title derives from McLuhan’s intro to Subliminal Seduction:
“Information overload equals pattern recognition.” Media Ad-vice: An Introduction by Marshall McLuhan
http://marketingmasterinsights.com/input/2012/04/information-overload-equals-pattern-recognition-media-ad-vice-introduction-marshall-mcluhan/

Though McLuhan cites IBM for the pattern recognition quote, I’ve not been able to find anything pointing to that Online.

]]> Comment on Review: The Mechanical Bride (centennial edition) by michael edmunds http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/04/02/review-mechanical-bride/comment-page-1/#comment-2431 michael edmunds Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:49:36 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=558#comment-2431 please add end quotes after ...which is advertising." please add end quotes after …which is advertising.”

]]> Comment on Review: The Mechanical Bride (centennial edition) by michael edmunds http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/04/02/review-mechanical-bride/comment-page-1/#comment-2430 michael edmunds Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:48:16 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=558#comment-2430 One of the visitors to McLuhan's "Monday Nights" was Bill Keys. Keys wrote _Subliminal Seduction_ ( and btw lost his tenure position because of it.) McLuhan wrote the intro to the book. (It happens to be on-line- http://marketingmasterinsights.com/input/2012/04/information-overload-equals-pattern-recognition-media-ad-vice-introduction-marshall-mcluhan/ ) Of note here: P. xviii of the intro by McLuhan "The Playboy’s Plaything Things have changed electrically since I published The Mechanical Bride in 1951. The assembly-line love goddess, abstract and austere and inhuman, has been succeeded by hula-hooping, mini-skirted, tribally anonymous jujubes. Utterly embraceable, consumable, and expendable, they expect little, for they know that the fragile ego of the playboy cannot endure the threat of any strain or commitment. Thanks to color photography, and then to color TV, the magnetic city has become a single erogenous zone. At every turn there is an immediate encounter with extremely erotic situations which exactly correspond to the media “coverage” of violence. “Bad news” has long been the hard core of the press, indispensable for the moving of the mass of “good news” which is advertising. McLuhan's ref to the "Magnetic City" is a nod to Wyndham Lewis and his Apes of God. One of the visitors to McLuhan’s “Monday Nights” was Bill Keys. Keys wrote _Subliminal Seduction_ ( and btw lost his tenure position because of it.) McLuhan wrote the intro to the book. (It happens to be on-line- http://marketingmasterinsights.com/input/2012/04/information-overload-equals-pattern-recognition-media-ad-vice-introduction-marshall-mcluhan/ )

Of note here: P. xviii of the intro by McLuhan
“The Playboy’s Plaything
Things have changed electrically since I published The Mechanical Bride in 1951. The assembly-line love goddess, abstract and austere and inhuman, has been succeeded by hula-hooping, mini-skirted, tribally anonymous jujubes. Utterly embraceable, consumable, and expendable, they expect little, for they know that the fragile ego of the playboy cannot endure the threat of any strain or commitment.

Thanks to color photography, and then to color TV, the magnetic city has become a single erogenous zone. At every turn there is an immediate encounter with extremely erotic situations which exactly correspond to the media “coverage” of violence. “Bad news” has long been the hard core of the press, indispensable for the moving of the mass of “good news” which is advertising.

McLuhan’s ref to the “Magnetic City” is a nod to Wyndham Lewis and his Apes of God.

]]> Comment on Review: The Mechanical Bride (centennial edition) by michael edmunds http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/04/02/review-mechanical-bride/comment-page-1/#comment-2273 michael edmunds Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:09:38 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=558#comment-2273 http://www.canadianart.ca/online/reviews/2010/06/10/the-mechanical-bride/ "Interestingly, McLuhan derived the book’s name from Marcel Duchamp’s 1926 work The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass. Duchamp’s hybrid drawing-sculpture depicted an imagined factory run by a literally mechanical bride. McLuhan’s reference to the work was loaded; like Duchamp’s bride and her captive bachelors, postwar America could easily be viewed as a closed system of producers and consumers divided along gender binaries and fuelled by sex." Most consider that McLuhan looked back at his "Bride" as way to moralistic in tone. As he moved on to the Galaxy and UM he became more and more the guy with out a point of view. (At least his public persona.) Like you I consider the book a valuable look at the 50's. http://www.canadianart.ca/online/reviews/2010/06/10/the-mechanical-bride/

“Interestingly, McLuhan derived the book’s name from Marcel Duchamp’s 1926 work The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass. Duchamp’s hybrid drawing-sculpture depicted an imagined factory run by a literally mechanical bride. McLuhan’s reference to the work was loaded; like Duchamp’s bride and her captive bachelors, postwar America could easily be viewed as a closed system of producers and consumers divided along gender binaries and fuelled by sex.”

Most consider that McLuhan looked back at his “Bride” as way to moralistic in tone. As he moved on to the Galaxy and UM he became more and more the guy with out a point of view. (At least his public persona.)

Like you I consider the book a valuable look at the 50’s.

]]> Comment on Skype – very cool indeed by Light Through McLuhan : Why the workplace is going to look a lot like Facebook http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/02/09/skype-very-cool-indeed/comment-page-1/#comment-828 Light Through McLuhan : Why the workplace is going to look a lot like Facebook Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:00:37 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=439#comment-828 [...] with people ‘face to face’ (or possibly, some real/virtual hybrid – there I think Skype is going to give Facebook a run for its money). The obsolescent Facebook reveals its true potential as workplace interface, where we go to peruse [...] [...] with people ‘face to face’ (or possibly, some real/virtual hybrid – there I think Skype is going to give Facebook a run for its money). The obsolescent Facebook reveals its true potential as workplace interface, where we go to peruse [...]

]]> Comment on Skype – very cool indeed by Alice Rae http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/2012/02/09/skype-very-cool-indeed/comment-page-1/#comment-483 Alice Rae Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:17:42 +0000 http://lightthroughmcluhan.org/blog/?p=439#comment-483 Thanks - it has been good for me to try and articulate my thoughts! I think there is more to say on Skype reversal - in the direction you have said, in terms of the wireless body, I will revisit this sometime again I think... Thanks – it has been good for me to try and articulate my thoughts!
I think there is more to say on Skype reversal – in the direction you have said, in terms of the wireless body, I will revisit this sometime again I think…

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