McLuhan Invokes a Shamanic Analogue
Prevailing Western cultural myths surrounding technological
advancement plot a trajectory of cumulative “innovations” that propel
civilization – and by extension the individual – in a progressively more
rational, mechanized, automated and abiological direction: away from the
natural world and the animal body. It is generally accepted that technology
represents a triumph over nature via a body of progressive improvements on
tools and other media, and while that can be demonstrated to be categorically
true, any analysis of the underlying side effects of individuals submerged in
the techno-industrial milieu, especially negative observations, are met with
skepticism, confusion or derision and occur late if at all. In the mid-20th
century, Marshall McLuhan presented an alternative interpretation that reversed
the trajectory of the previous Weltanschauung; specialized, machine-like
Cartesian man was a biproduct of print technology, print itself was a detour
and the new electric technology promised to paradoxically deliver humanity back
to an audile-tactile, whole field perception illuminated by the image of an
instantaneously connected global tribe. It is the purpose of this paper to
describe McLuhan's pioneering and prescient analyses that continue to run
contrary to the generally accepted view of the techno-human condition (a
mindset itself, according to McLuhan, that is a relic of long obviated
print-oriented sense ratios[1])
in relation to individuals working in the arts and their role in the potential
elucidation of the hidden yet profoundly transformative effects of the
ubiquitous experience of media.
