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Old July 13th, 2013 #1
Jean West
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 476
Default Reading is Racist (actually)

Two days ago I posted an article entitled The Triumph of Communism written by Andrew Hamilton. It was of particular interest to me because a day earlier, in Identity vs Globalism, I had criticized comments involving Communism that were made by Paul Gottfried at the recent Identitarian Ideas conference in Sweden.

Today Hamilton has posted Reading is Racist, in which he states in the opening paragraph: "it is essential to be aware of the differences between orality, print, and electronic media." Automatically I recall the work of Marshall McLuhan, and his huge best-seller, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. In my Bantam Classic copy, two dramatically graphic facing pages ask (scratching head), . . . the massage? and the next page shouts, and how!

Quote:
"The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." A.N. Whitehead
McLuhan specifically addressed the symbiotic relationship between the brain and the media, the fact that different forms of media rewire and wire differently, and that one form produces a different kind of individual than another form. He introduced the concept of "the global village" and foresaw the Internet, though he was writing in the early 60s. Needless to say, he was considered odd.

Wikipedia has a comprehensive outline of McLuhan's work, and there are many videos of him and of his ideas. 'Literacy, as a form of awareness (involvement), is a highly specialist and objective thing . . . you can stand back and look at situations objectively; the tv person has no objectivity at all. Literacy is objective; tv is subjective (totally involving). Radio listeners are far more literate than tv people. To "read" means to guess; reading is an activity of rapid guessing (because each word has so many different meanings from which to select within context). Each media form is associated with one or more specific human senses." (more or less verbatim)

Two videos that I recommend feature Corey Anton, Professor of Communications, his brief discussion of

and especially his extremely clear and interesting "Understanding McLuhan's Understanding Media," (which also discusses McLuhan's "hot" vs "cool" forms of media).



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