In the comments for the previous post, someone named "McLuhan Prophecy" brought to our attention this article. Please read it, as it offers some startling neurological validation for McLuhan's concept of extensions. Our tools, it turns out, are not simply metaphorical extensions of our biological selves, but are in fact wired right through us. Here's an excerpt:
The findings "fairly clearly show that monkey tool use involves the incorporation of tools into the body schema, literally as extensions of the body," says Dietrich Stout, an archaeologist specializing in tool use at University College London. Scott Frey, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon, Eugene, says that in humans, this ability to represent tools in the brain, combined with a capacity for innovation, "was no doubt a fundamental step in the development of technology."
1 comment:
Acoustic environments seemed to trouble some of you. It isn't so much "antithetical" from the visual as you may think. But the main confusion arises from failing to separate the old acoustic (pre- alphabet) from the new acoustic (electronic.) The new or what W.Ong calls second orality is for McLuhan not acoustic at all but tactile. It is the tactility of TV the Web etc that is the new energy we are coping with. This is the hardest and yet the most basic of McLuhan's tenets. Tactility is the integration of all the senses.
Post a Comment