Everything as Nothing and Meaningless… I. Do. Not. Exist.

I’d like to introduce to you, Eric McLuhan. You guessed it, he is the son of Marshall McLuhan, and yes…as the saying goes: like father, like son. Needless to say, Eric McLuhan has also done his fair share of work on media and technology.

As I read McLuhan2.0’s Electric Language, the notion of technological determinism really seemed to surface. I’ll admit, I never considered this idea before aside from biological, cultural, and economic determinism. But, after my last post regarding our Wall-E world, my head is swimming around trying to make sense of our pixellated matrix world.

McLuhan2.0 pointed out a lot of things. But I’ll try to narrow down to a few observations and thoughts.

1. We are living in the age of post literacy yet, there is no such thing as an advanced book – you know, high-tech-gadgety ones. This includes anything read off a computer screen or the TV. McLuhan states that although you may read like you would from print medium, the computer medium possesses qualities of TV. Thus, you may think you are reading, but the method is entirely different. I won’t get into it here, but this idea goes back to Marshall McLuhan and the differences between hot and cold mediums and their effects. So, this leaves me wondering…what about Kobo readers? They seem to be picking up. Would you consider them true reading like a book, or is it McLuhan’s idea of the advanced book? Where are books and print headed? But since my work and focus is around identity, I digress. Interesting to ponder anyhow.
2. “The computers and various networks that link us bring about a new condition of massive loss of identity by means of participation in-depth in electronic processes” (p. 4): what?! According to McLuhan, the computer separates us, yet binds us together. By participating socially via the computer, we lose our identity and own being. Our sense of loss thus draw us to groups to belong. This leads to the idea of the disappearance of individualism as McLuhan states that rather instead of an audience watching, we are all participating as actors like a theatre…to no one but our own selves.
3. Open crowd vs. closed crowd. The open crowd needs to be everywhere and grow, and can’t be stagnant. The closed crowd has boundaries and limits. Stable. McLuhan places the electric crowd as open. Which poses the question “are you in or out?” BUT!!…The electric crowd is NOT about growing, but of being. To just be. This made me think of a concert for example. Everyone is separate, as their own selves attending the concert and watching. But at the same time everyone is participating together in a shared moment. Online space works like this. Yet the mass audience works similarly, but differently at the same time. In search of one’s own online identity, everyone seems to want to be identified as unique and different, special. A standout above the rest. However, McLuhan posits that everyone is the same in an electric crowd. In a sense, we are nobody. I disagree, as I notice people going to arms lengths to portray themselves better than their neighbour. Or…is it because we are nobodies that compel us to appear better than the rest?

I return to this question from my past post…Does this mean we are living in an existentialist and/or nihilist absurd world?

Eric McLuhan also draws some connections to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Dismal and disheartening this may sound, but as I reflect on my last post, we are all living in Plato’s Cave. The computer as the cave. The internet, social media, and information communication technology are the puppets; and we are chained by them and the shadows they create…”The electric crowd lives as if already dead” (148).

McLuhan as Wall-E?!!

While I’m sure most of us out there have our opinions about Disney and how they are laden with ideologies of patriarchy and Euro-centrism, did Disney (and Pixar) get it right with Wall-E?

Yikes, are we doomed?!

After thinking about my last post with Marshall McLuhan I couldn’t help but be slightly scared about what the future holds. Or possibly what might be lurking around the corners of our future. McLuhan speaks of technology becoming one with humans, numbing us into a suspended state of being. Once again, I call myself out on not being the most literate of philosophy, but here I make my attempt (I hope some kind soul who reads this might help me out in correcting and further educating me if I’m off). Is Wall-E a take of McLuhan like some existential and absurdist allegory of what’s to come? Should I start buying stocks in moving lazy-boy type chairs that connect me to the rest of the world via information communication technology?

As I make my connections with McLuhan and Wall-E, I can’t help but have a certain commercial play in a repeated loop in my head…

 

Something slightly alarmed me the first time I saw this commercial. Perhaps it’s the omniscient narrator, perhaps it’s the metaphoric parallels of McLuhan and Wall-E when the girl decides to walk into the TV…like she is accepting her fate of technology as her extension.

Computer, I know you are chanting “one of us, one of us…” as I type this. As you try to initiate me into your world, am I missing something? Why does a large part of the world seem happy and content with this and not be alarmed?

Sam 2, Computer 3

Ode to Marshall McLuhan

I have been dropping references to McLuhan here and there, so it is probably about time I ramble on my thoughts about him. As such, this post will look at The Playboy Interview and some of my readings from his book Understanding Media. Living in a post colonial, post industrial, globalized (the list can go on) country (and world) , what does that mean for me?

It was Marshall McLuhan who recognized the facets of technology and the nature of living in a “global village”. However, I can probably bet that when he coined the term “global village”, he wasn’t referring to the one that exists today. What McLuhan meant was that the world as we know it is shrinking. Where it may have at one point taken months to travel across “the pond”, our world became more globalized thanks to the advances in technology.

McLuhan also posited that three basic technological advances has forever reshaped the way we physically see things, thus understand, and ultimately interact: the invention of the phonetic alphabet, the movable type, and the telegraph. What he also warns is that although we are making human progress, we are also enslaving ourselves to it. Forever married in sickness and in health – technology becomes an extension of our bodies til death do us part.

Yet, going back to the notion of McLuhan’s “global village”, this certainly more than ever rings true today. Information communication technology and social media has now connected me to my next door neighbour, as well as my online neighbour who lives half way across the world. We literally are living in a GLOBAL VILLAGE as I participate with the online community, coming together, sharing my thoughts-rambles-feelings-emotions-ideas-frustrations and on and on. Just as my best friend can comment and give me suggestions on my choice outfits for a date, a stranger can also pipe in giving me his or her fashion advice. If I’m outraged about a service from a company, I can shout it out on an online discussion board sharing my feelings with others in the same boat in my surrounding city, but also worldwide. So yes, I live participating everyday connected whether I know it or not, with others around the world sharing ourselves to each other in our global village. In my opinion, this is awesomely scary.

McLuhan speaks of a de-tribalized man, and the decentralizing nature of technology making references of our central nervous system. As I make meaning of this, I realize that what he means is this. When the human body is attacked, the body autopilots to safeguard the core: the central nervous system. So, the computer works like a virus. Our body then works to fight off the intruder, not only leaving our outer extremities exposed, but leaves at risk our core an open target. Thus, de-centralizing our whole being and suspending us into a trance-like numbness: narcosis.

As we are closing ourselves off through the use of media and technology, I draw parallels to Karl Marx and his atheist belief and view in religion as he saw religion as “the opium of the people“. Opium as we know is used to relieve pain. But is also addictive. Like opium, religion and technology are like an addictive drug that disillusions its users. Technology is now moving instantaneously. While we were able to slowly adapt, understand, and see the patterns of newly introduced technology, the internet is so fast paced that we are swept up along with it, taking our understandings and the ability to fully grasp and comprehend its true form and nature. We haven’t had the time to settle down with it. While it may seem like our relationship with the internet and social media are very much like an old married couple, we are still in the “getting to know you honeymoon” stages.

“Subliminal and docile acceptance of media impact has made them prisons without walls for their human users” (20). Prisons Mr. McLuhan? So you’re saying media has a totalizing panoptic effect? Foucault and Goffman are rolling in their graves.

So it seems, technology as both blessing and a curse.

Lastly, what struck me from McLuhan was this: “The future of works consists of earning a living in the automation age” (346). Scary thought. That we will soon be seeking jobs that serve technology, rather than thinking technology as serving us. This is starting to sound like a sci-fi movie. While technology seemingly frees us up for more leisure time, we are spending it back into technology which then enslave and bind us to a vicious cycle.

Sambot

I’ve been feeling a lot lately like a robot. Like I am one with my cell phone and gadgets. Of course, this sense might have been heightened when this past week I’ve been lugging around a heart monitor that looks like a walk-man (does anyone even remember walk-mans?!) on my hip. Doctor’s orders are to wear for two weeks, and press a button that emits an obnoxious noise for 30 seconds every time my heart feels a little off.

Those 30 seconds of noise is perhaps the most uncomfortably self-consciously aware moment where I feel like I have “E”‘s written on both my eyes while I chant “error” on repeat.

Where am I going with this? Well, the week prior, I was at Rogers looking at upgrading my phone since my contract was nearing its completion. Ironically, this fiasco took a whole day and much to my dismay of a day wasted, I walked out with nothing new, upgraded or renewed. Turns out, Rogers seemed to be having technical connectivity issues where their server was down a couple of days.

No big deal? I actually felt a little bad for the customer service reps that were stuck working those technical difficulty days. They were inundated with antsy, aggressive, short-tempered, and irritated people who were left in a limbo that Rogers would give them a call as soon as they were able to get access to their information. They were doing the best they can, but as always, that’s never enough for the dissatisfied customer.

I don’t know the whole Rogers situation during that period, but what I did overhear from customers (and around town as my ears perked up) was that they had problems sending text messages, or frequent dropped calls, trouble connecting to the internet, or *gasp* the TV wasn’t working.

This brought me to the Surrealist painting by Robert Williams: “Symbiotic Mediocrity” as pictured above. We seem to have relinquished our own being over to telecommunicative technology.

Plugged in. Like the painting, McLuhan was right about technology as extensions of man.

But is being plugged in constantly more disturbing and creepy, or Williams’ Foucauldian and Goffman-like portrayal of how we are actively participating in watching each other? Add to that the notion of social media and how we watch and “follow” each other through that…

I grew up before cell phones had been full-fledged available to the masses. While I once remember sticking my finger in the proper number and moving the rotary dial ring, I can’t even muster and fathom what it was like before, and how I had got on without instantly texting someone to let them know I am running late.

Yes, I’ll admit, I have fallen to the luxuries of communication culture. Computer, you win again.

Sam 2, Computer 2

Identity Crisis .:Part 2:.

Part of my difficulty in Part 1 and this post was that I originally loved Foucault and Goffman. At least, at the superficial level as a used-for-past-research acquaintance. I got what they were saying at the introductory level and believed it. In today’s reality-tv obsessed programming, I agreed with those two: in essence, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING.

I guess I still love those two old pals of mine. But, the game-changer was my reading from Feminism/Postmodernism and the critique on Foucault (which I suppose can be applied to Goffman).

“Big Brother is watching” — this is the idea of power being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We hold it in the sense of controlling everyone’s actions, yet that omniscience we hold is both almighty, and meaningless at the same time. Quite simply, it means something because we make it mean something. I work part-time in retail where there are cameras. Knowing that corporate has much better things to do than sit and watch me all day makes me think that I don’t have to care as much. However, knowing that my actions are archived changes my mind in doing something out of line. Even the possibility knowing that someone just might decide to do a random check-in via satellite and watch me in real-time. All these possibilities keep me in line. I do get borrowed in another location, where the store is much smaller, and there are no cameras. Knowing this when I go there, I would think I would let loose a little, but I don’t.

Why? It all goes back to performance and the panopticon. The employees at that store all have their own standards, so I have to maintain that. In addition, they know that my standards are always tested being on camera, so I’m under scrutiny to not make mistakes or be useless.

This got me wondering about gender dynamics, relations, and identity: how do these narratives, scripts, schemas, play out as a performance?

Hartsock in the Feminism/Postmodernism reader specifically critiques Foucault that while he has “…obvious sympathy for those who are subjugated in various ways, he writes from the perspective of the dominator, ‘the self-proclaimed majority'” (165). Hartsock also points out the complexities and controversies of the politics of recognition as, “…power relations are less visible to those who are in a position to dominate others” (165). Thus, how valid are some of his theories to apply for someone who is marginalized? Hartsock also points out that Foucault suggests that those in the margins are accountable for their own actions which sounds a lot like blaming the victim.

Going back to Part 1, I mentioned that through the years growing up, I chose to act as one-of-the-boys, as well as dismissed my ethnic culture so as not to appear too “off the boat fobby”. Yet, my WordPress blog Gravatar and my Facebook profile picture is a picture of Sailor Mars…very ironically iconic and symbolic of my Asian identity. I also will point out that being once young, I admittedly have posted suggestive ‘girly’ photos of myself while intoxicated, scantily clad and so forth. In fact, those pictures are still up on my profile. Whether it’s for my ego, or whether I choose to embrace my silly youthful mistakes, or whether I just don’t care to upkeep my profile, that is a whole topic I dare a psychologist to analyze and tell me what they think.

The question I am trying to get at here is this: are we really perpetuating a cycle of our identities based on what others expect of us? I like to think I do things for myself, but the rude awakening of reality has told me that I put way too much effort in thinking if you all will approve of every move I make first. It’s all apparently very silently and internally calculated, then channeled. And somehow, I believe my actions are authentic, but perhaps it’s more contrived than I’d like.