I do not flatter myself, but could not read this and not respond.
Once we were close, once we were lovers and once we shared a deep love for and of film.
I wish we were still talking, because I could not agree with you this time, at least not entirely.
Harlan Ellison wrote The Glass Teat in 1970 and I have been long since weaned. Television and film are mere tools that we the people have given too much power to. Nothing more than visual, aural and physical stimulation, they have become symbols of a culture that allows itself to be the driven by their force. They are symptoms of our disease, not the disease itself.
In the early '60s Marshal McLuhan stated that 'the medium is the message'. He also said:
[quote]
"By putting our physical bodies inside our extended nervous systems, by means of electric media, we set up a dynamic by which all previous technologies that are mere extensions of hands and feet and teeth, will be translated into information systems. Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. We must serve our electric technology with the same servo-mechanistic fidelity with which we once served our coracle, our canoe, our typography, and all other extensions of our physical organs. But, there is a difference here. Those previous technologies were partial and fragmentary. The electric is total and inclusive. An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness. With the new media, however, it is now possible to store and to translate everything; and as for speed, that is no problem. No further acceleration is possible this side of the light barrier."
Mcluhan, Understanding Media - The Extensions of Man, 1963
[/quote]
If we as a culture have sold out our individuality and handed over our creativity wholesale to the medium and are now spirirtually bankrupt or starving from our offering, it is of our own doing. We are the culpable ones, and IMHO it is up to us to redirect that course.
Once we were close, once we were lovers and once we shared a deep love for and of film.
I wish we were still talking, because I could not agree with you this time, at least not entirely.
Harlan Ellison wrote The Glass Teat in 1970 and I have been long since weaned. Television and film are mere tools that we the people have given too much power to. Nothing more than visual, aural and physical stimulation, they have become symbols of a culture that allows itself to be the driven by their force. They are symptoms of our disease, not the disease itself.
In the early '60s Marshal McLuhan stated that 'the medium is the message'. He also said:
[quote]
"By putting our physical bodies inside our extended nervous systems, by means of electric media, we set up a dynamic by which all previous technologies that are mere extensions of hands and feet and teeth, will be translated into information systems. Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide. We must serve our electric technology with the same servo-mechanistic fidelity with which we once served our coracle, our canoe, our typography, and all other extensions of our physical organs. But, there is a difference here. Those previous technologies were partial and fragmentary. The electric is total and inclusive. An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness. With the new media, however, it is now possible to store and to translate everything; and as for speed, that is no problem. No further acceleration is possible this side of the light barrier."
Mcluhan, Understanding Media - The Extensions of Man, 1963
[/quote]
If we as a culture have sold out our individuality and handed over our creativity wholesale to the medium and are now spirirtually bankrupt or starving from our offering, it is of our own doing. We are the culpable ones, and IMHO it is up to us to redirect that course.
Reply
Leave a comment