From the Playboy interview: Marshall Mcluhan, Playboy magazine (March 1969 copyright, 1994 by Playboy. "...Narcissus narcosis, a syndrome whereby man remains as unaware of the psychic and social effects of his new technology as a fish of the water it swims in. As a result, precisely at the point where a new media-induced environment becomes all pervasive and transmogrifies our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible."
I love, love, love this analogy, what beautiful writing!
Mcluhan is speaking about how completely unaware we are of the many effects media has on us. We live in an overly media-saturated environment, new technologies are introduced at such a fast pace, we learn about and get used to one new technology and immediately there is a newer, better, faster, stronger, more amazing version available to learn about. There really is no time to become aware of the effects they have on us because we are always just trying to keep up. As Mcluhan says, just when we change with or become changed by these new technologies, that is when they become invisible to us and we become numb to them.
About Me
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- regina
- i'm a senior in fashion design at otis college of art and design... i have a sweetie pie hubby, angel and we have an adorable 2 yr. old son, elijah. these are the three loves of my life and consume every ounce of my time and i love it.
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breaking it down
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2 comments:
(this is a reply to your first two blogs on the McLuhan interview)
How did this quote (in the second blog w/that big quote) interest you? It’s related to Jenkin’s digital immigrant concerns, though he and McLuhan seem to have different solutions. And definitely while being at Otis, I have witnessed several “digital immigrants” who refuse to use Ospace or e-mail. Though it’s not a big concern for myself, it surprises me because they’re teaching at a college full of “digital natives”, and all students of Otis definitely need to be “digital natives” (if they’re not, they soon will be, especially since they encourage us to use those databases, logging into computers, using Ospace, checking e-mail). I remember several moments where classmates and I were giggling because our teacher didn’t know what South Park or some website was.
Regarding McLuhan’s concern for drop-outs, his idea is outdated now because schools wouldn’t have drop-outs, just frustrated students.
And so are you proposing that we need to slow down and look at how media affects us? What solution would you suggest in order to stop us becoming numb? An example I could think of as a moment of when we’ve been “denumbed” is when we continually use a website and become accustomed to where all the links are, but when the website is changed, we have to reorient ourselves and find where the link to the e-mail is (I’m thinking of Yahoo’s main page, which changes constantly). But on Google, where the main search page has hardly changed, we don’t think twice when we search something and not think about the results we get. Technology has always been depicted as something to make our life easier, is that a form of technology being visible?
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