McLUHAN'S WAKE: MEDIA AND ENVIRONMENT

Marshall McLuhan was “the media guru” of the 1970s and ’80s, a Canadian scholar who titillated the imagination of many with his enigmatic and illuminating pronouncements — “We invent things and thereafter they invent us.” But he may have had more to say about environmental issues than he intended. As is often the case with visionaries, their insights apply more broadly than the specific subjects they are addressing. So, nearly 30 years after his death on Dec. 31, 1980, the environmental implications of his insights are now becoming evident.
If McLuhan is correct, this means that the global village will begin to fracture and the parts will begin to isolate. “Pushed too far,” he predicted, “many become one, one become many.” We are beginning to get some sense of how this fracturing could occur. Violence is one possibility. As McLuhan said, the quest for identity is a central aspect of the electric age, and violence is the only way we have been able to achieve identity — note terrorism. But peak oil could have a devastating effect on the international movement of goods and the interconnection of people. Exhausted natural resources could isolate countries by inducing them to give priority to their domestic interests. And the social and political unrest that could be triggered by extreme climate change would likely fragment the global village.

McLuhan wasn’t attempting to describe an ideal world; he was attempting to describe a real one.

He personally did not like change. But he believed we could avoid the worst effects of our inventions if we understood their impacts and anticipated consequences — “Nothing is inevitable, provided you are aware.” So, he said of his Laws of Media, “They come in hope but they only work as questions.” What do our inventions enhance, obsolesce, retrieve or reverse? The trick is to recognize the patterns before we are victimized by results we do not want.

Canada.com