Rebalancing the Sensorium: The Media Ecology of Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto School

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Media Ecology ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
The Media

Solace in sound: Glenn Gould’s electronic solitude

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Steven Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Musical Tradition ◽  
General Systems ◽  
The Media ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
Media Environments

Inspired by Marshall McLuhan, pianist Glenn Gould dedicated his career to polemics against the concert hall tradition. Through radio/television broadcasts, written works and contentious recorded catalogue, Gould advocated adoption of the new electric media environment of the mid-twentieth century, challenging musical traditions of centuries past. Gould also used telephonic technology to mediate contact with the outside world. Gould has been acknowledged by such authors as Paul Théberge as putting into practice the ideas of Marshall McLuhan. In this study, I follow Robert Logan’s work in media ecology and general systems and investigate Gould’s polemics through systems theory. In particular, I employ Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems, offering a model of society through which we may observe the effects of electric technology via the notion of functional de-differentiation of social systems as discussed by authors such as Erkki Sevänen. I suggest that Gould’s polemics are not just commentary on musical tradition but the media environments in which those traditions arose and show how we too can find solace in sound.

Modernism and the Media History of Obscenity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Forster
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Media History ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Friedrich Kittler ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Lady Chatterley's Lover ◽  
The Way

This chapter surveys the history of obscenity in English jurisprudence, from the invention of obscene libel as a crime in the eighteenth century through the 1857 Obscene Publications Act and its 1959 reform. It draws on Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler to argue that the invention of obscenity, and its subsequent definitions and redefinitions, reflect changes in media ecology and technology. It begins by examining the 1960 trial of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, before surveying the history of obscenity, and concluding with readings of the way the technologically mediated character of obscenity is reflected in both James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as Young Man and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

scholarly journals Understanding Cultural Convergence through Media Ecology

Comunicar ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (33) ◽  
pp. 25-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Octavio Islas
Keyword(s):  
Media Ecology ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
Knowledge Communities ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Cultural Convergence ◽  
Communication Environment ◽  
The Media ◽  
Medios De Comunicacion

Before the Internet, the different media had specifically defined functions and markets. However, since the emergence of the Internet and digital communication, the same content can be found right across the media; this is known as cultural convergence. This media crossing anticipates the coming of new markets of cultural consumption. Based on media ecology, with specific reference to the thesis developed by Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, and Henry Jenkins, cultural convergence is studied as a complex communication environment. Cultural convergence modifies the operative procedures of media industries. However, the most significant changes can be found within the knowledge communities. Antes de Internet cada medio de comunicación tenía funciones y mercados perfectamente definidos. Sin embargo, a consecuencia del formidable desarrollo de Internet y de las comunicaciones digitales, el mismo contenido hoy puede circular a través de distintos medios de comunicación. Esa es la convergencia cultural. El relato transmediático anticipa el advenimiento de nuevos mercados de consumo cultural. Con base en la ecología de medios y particularmente considerando las tesis de Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman y Henry Jenkins, es analizada la convergencia cultural como complejo ambiente comunicativo. La convergencia cultural modifica los procedimientos de operación de las industrias mediáticas. Los cambios más significativos, sin embargo, se presentan en las comunidades de conocimiento.

IAINBAXTER&raisonnE: Catalogues raisonnés and the ontological turn

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-16
Author(s):  
Adam Lauder
Keyword(s):  
Linked Data ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Library And Information Science ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
The Media ◽  
Catalogue Raisonne ◽  
Ontological Turn

IAINBAXTER&raisonnE is an experimental catalogue raisonné of the conceptual artist IAIN BAXTER &, former President of the ‘critical company’ N.E. Thing Co. Ltd. (NETCO). NETCO creatively re-purposed the media ecology of Marshall McLuhan to challenge Conceptual art’s utilitarian ‘aesthetic of administration’ as well as the categorical assumptions informing library and information science that it mimicked. This article describes the main features of the prototype and argues in favour of an approach to developing catalogues raisonnés with artist-centred designs, for which the principles of linked data may be unduly restrictive or even incompatible.

Networks

2019 ◽  
pp. 126-146
Author(s):  
Carlos A. Scolari
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Writing ◽  
Book Publishing ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Digital Networks ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Wiki Technology ◽  
The World ◽  
Walter Ong ◽  
Media Ecosystem ◽  
The Media

Digital networks shape traditional actors (authors, readers, librarians, publishers, and other intermediaries), institutions (libraries, bookstores), processes (collaborative writing, translation, correction), and texts (hypertext, open access, wiki technology). The article deals with the main transformations in these fields from a media ecology perspective. Media Ecology is a discipline first outlined in the early 1960s by researchers like Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, and Walter Ong. From this perspective, the emergence of the World Wide Web in the 1990s and social media in the 2000s radically changed the conditions of the media ecosystem. In this new context the old media and actors must adapt to the new environment if they want to survive. The chapter deals with these mutations and adaptations in the specific field of book publishing.

scholarly journals McLuhan and I Ching: An Interological Inquiry

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Etude Comparative ◽  
Étude Comparative ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
I Ching ◽  
The Media

This article explores under-examined resonances between I Ching and McLuhan’s work. It presents I Ching as a metamedium, shows that McLuhan’s four laws of the media have precursors in I Ching, and evaluates the relevance of I Ching in the age of digital mediation. The article illustrates that studying I Ching in comparison with McLuhan’s work opens up numerous opportunities for mutual illumination between the two.Cet article s’intéresse aux interrelations peu explorées entre le Yi-King (ou « Livre des transformations ») et l’oeuvre de Marshall McLuhan. On y montre que le Yi-King peut être conçu comme un « métamédia » au coeur duquel il est possible d’identifier des éléments paraissant anticiper les quatre lois des médias proposées par McLuhan. On s’y intéresse aussi à la pertinence du « Livre des transformations » à l’ère de la médiation numérique. Au bout du compte, cet article démontre qu’une étude comparative du Yi-King et de l’oeuvre de McLuhan ouvre la voie à plusieurs possibilités de correspondances mutuellement éclairantes.

scholarly journals Medieøkologien i SKAM

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
Ruth Grüters ◽  
Knut Ove Eliassen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
The Media ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Media Practices

AbstractTo understand the success of SKAM, the series’ innovative use of “social media” must be taken into consideration. The article follows two lines of argument, one diachronic, the other synchronic. The concept of remediation allows for a historical perspective that places the series in a longer tradition of “real time”-fictions and media practices that span from the epistolary novels of the 18th century by way of radio theatre and television serials to the new media of the 21st century. Framing the series within the current media ecology (marked by the connectivity logic of “social media”), the authors analyze how the choice of the blog as the drama’s media platform has formed the ways the series succeeded in affecting and mobilizing its audience. Given the long tradition of strong pedagogical premises in the teenager serials of publicly financed Norwegian television, the authors note the absence of any explicit media critical perspectives or didacticism. Nevertheless, the claim is that the media-practices of the series, as well as the actions and discourses of its followers (blogposts, facebook-groups, etc.), generate new insights and knowledge with regards to the series’ form, content, and practices.

scholarly journals Voices from the can: McLuhan, the digital absolute and the problem of regressive progress (towards a materialist epistemology of media discourse)

2005 ◽  
pp. 9-69
Author(s):  
Borislav Mikulic
Keyword(s):  
Communication Theory ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Integral Approach ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Science And Literature ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
The Media ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Media Form

On the basis of selected examples of average lay as well as professional and theoretical discourses on the media phenomenon and the very notion of media, the author seeks to identify moments conducive to constructing a model for media analysis of a social-theoretical bent, and both structural-semiotic and substantive-critical in character. The analysis refers to the media in both the strict (technological) and the expanded (semiological) meaning of the term - as technical devices and semiotic objects, such as discourses of ideology, science and literature. In the first section (I. 1-3), almost entirely devoted to Marshall McLuhan?s brief and legendary text ?The Medium Is the Message?, his basic thesis is put under a discursive-logical analysis of the text and reverted into the seemingly diametrically opposed form, ?The Message Is the Medium?, whose further interpretive possibilities are then explored. In the second section (II. 1-3) McLuhan?s ?integral? approach to media analysis, as a particular theory (communication theory), is examined by placing it in the discursive context along with the ?End of Ideology? thesis from the 1960s and instances of humanistic-scientific discourse on non-technological media forms (hermeneutic theories of perception, psychoanalysis of narrative strategies in fictional discourses). The aim of the discussion is to relocate the phenomenon of conceptual regression (whether substantive, cultural, or ideological) in discourses presupposing absolute innovativeness and progressiveness of their media form. The result of the inquiry shows that regressive ness lies in the ?progressive? media form itself, that is, in the very conceptions (theories, ideologies) of the form.

Coda: Coronation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Whittington
Keyword(s):  
National Culture ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Total Eclipse ◽  
The Media

In the years after the war, radio faced a new threat from within Britain, as television rose to become the new dominant channel for the mediation of national culture. This transition is best represented by the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, the first national event to draw more television viewers than radio listeners across the country. This double coronation—of monarch and medium—represents not so much the total eclipse of radio as the recalibration of the media ecology, as technologies continued to jostle for primacy in a crowded sensory landscape. For the writers who helped to write the radio war, however, it nonetheless signalled the passing of a moment of cultural primacy for those whose work encompassed the written and the spoken word.

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