Vancouver International Digital Festival

Vidfest Liveblogging: McLuhan 2.0

12:08pm - Q: Can we tie this back to Chris Anderson’s point about abundancy, are we closer or further away from the truth?

McLuhan: If the two balance out then, at any given moment, we get a half truth — which is still a fair amount of truth!

12:06pm - Q: Is there really a multiplicity of identities in our lives? How does this play out?

McLuhan: With our kids, particularly, the idea of a singular, linear existence is of no use at all. To live in many spaces and times at once is to live mythically. This is a wholly new way of imagining being and existence, but it’s normal for them.

12:01pm - Q: As we become more and more electronically connected, what are we in danger of losing?

McLuhan: Our capacity for detachment and objectivity in any facet of our lives; and our private identity. By extension, private ownership as well. But in a world without private identity, private ownership becomes meaningless and useless.

12:01pm - Q&A — Seeking questions.

12:00pm - Tippett: Is participatory media tapping into this?

McLuhan: Absolutely, this kind of media has been around for 40 years but we’re only finally beginning to understand them and become conscious of them.

11:56am - Tippett: Is there a danger that we will become exposed to things we’ve previously been shielded from? My experience with Hurricane Katrina was seeing eyewitnesses accounts of the tragedy that were entirely unmediated. Does this worry you?

McLuhan: No, there’s no longer any separation between experience and performance. The whole thrust of reporting has changed from the actual data to the participatory part of news making — of the events themselves. I think we’ve gone all the way in the direction of paying almost exclusive attention on emotion and feeling. Old ideas of objectivity and detachment no longer engage people.

11:54am - Tippett: What is the effect of this?

McLuhan: The global village is full of gossip. We have to participate in events as they occur. We have to play roles in the global theatre or we become irrelevant.

11: 53am - Tippett: Is media metaphysics?

McLuhan: Yes. Media is only understandable as a form of metaphysics. Bodies are no longer relevant. Electronically we are simultaneously in many places at once.

11:52am - McLuhan: We’ve moved out of the physical realm into the metaphysical.

11:46am - Tippett: Is there a group identity that emerges from this kind of interaction?

McLuhan: On the global stage, you are the roles that you play. In Take Today, my father discussed a collective move toward decentralization, a system without a centre, and no definable margins — which roughly defines the internet — and aligns with a medieval definition of God.

11:42am - Tippett: Move from rural life to compressed urban living. I’m wondering what you think about social networks like Facebook, as a means of adapting to new social conditions?

McLuhan: Your social network is your audience; what better example do we have than this of a global theatre?

11:40am - Tippett: It would be helpful for you to explain the concept of the “Global Village”?

McLuhan: It’s an uncomfortable place; everyone knows everything about you. You’re always in close contact and proximity to other people. The term was coined to describe the effects of radio. But we’re living in a new one, or a new part of the village. When you put people in contact virtually, electronically, you create the conditions of a village. The bodies being dissociated is almost irrelevant.

Television and satellite have turned the world into a global stage. Now everyone is looking not for jobs, but for roles to play. This brings in the idea of constructing an identity in relationship to an audience. This means the idea of private identity is no longer useful.

11:38am - McLuhan: In the arts, you realize the dynamics between conscious (attention) and unconscious (inattention) elements; and you begin to understand that there are very little conscious elements in the creation of media and art.

11:36am - Tippett: I was interested to note that you don’t have a computer. Why don’t you?

McLuhan: I don’t believe in getting too close to these things. If you do, you lose your capacity to be objective about them. Every new medium reconstrues the audience, by providing them with a new way of imagining things. This is what you begin to understand in studying the arts.

11:35am - Tippett: Attention is an important issue in contemporary media. My question to you is, as the holders of attention, are we the last great resource holders to be harvested?

McLuhan: News-savvy people are paying attention to harvesting inattention. There are massive amounts of inattention. Advertisers no longer compete for your attention, they compete for your subconscious — a place where you have no defenses. It is by definition an area of vulnerability.

11:32am - Tippett: How have you seen the use of the word media change in your own lifetime?

McLuhan: Medium used to be understood as an intermediary, a communion with spirits, not as my father and I understood it.

111:30am - Tippett: Maybe you could start by telling us: what is media?

McLuhan: My father wrote a book The Medium is the Massage; media is an environment that includes a variety of technologies and aspects of culture.

11:25am - Introduction to Dr. Eric McLuhan, son of Marshall, in conversation with Michael Tippett, CMO and co-founder of NowPublic.com