How Marshall McLuhan Became a Famous Media Scholar
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
It's like reading a series of bombshell opening statements about different topics, but instead of following up with arguments to flesh out those statements, he just moves on to another bombshell opening statement about some other issue that also doesn't get fleshed out.
A lot of people take that to mean that's it's all fluff, but I think that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He was known to keep track of ideas on index cards- something interesting would occur to him, so he'd make an index card for that concept, and flesh it out with more thoughts on the topic, sketches, etc. He would then pick out a related set of index cards as the basis for a book. So, his process went a long way towards defining the structure of his books.
So, it's true that his books tend to be a loosely-connected series of concepts presented in an evocative and profound-sounding manner, but never fully fleshed out. But they're often great food for thought- maybe he doesn't go into sufficient detail, but they're full of nuggets of intellectual goodness that are great starting points for thinking about modern media and the flow of information in the modern world (even if the end result is coming to the conclusion that he was wrong about something).
That's basically Elon Musk's marketing scheme.
Finally, in 2038, the ever-expanding Musk Bubble pops. It had to eventually. No bubble can expand indefinitely when pressurized by constant application of Musk Force (designated by Μμ, or /Mu/mu in LaTeX, although the more interesting number is Musks over time (Μμ/s), assuming a constant Μμ/s^2). I hope this is not that timeline.
In a lighter timeline, 100 years from now he's remembered as a Thomas Edison-like historical figure who helped make space travel a reality. Hopefully that's our timeline, I just don't know.
>McLuhan’s probes, taken as truth-indifferent provocations, really are good to think with. It’s just that the man — rewarded for closeting his gloom — is more instructive than his books.
>You must explain why their ideas have any merit.
McLuhan does so if you read his books. Equally so you must explain why ideas do not have merit without ultimately dismissing them because of private metaphysics.
He has a pretty wide body of literature, and some of the more interesting aspects of it are about how technology (especially media) become an extension of the nervous system and body itself. (Of course this logical extreme is hive mind, singularity, etc...)
One of the other more interesting points (that has seemed more or less accurate) is that connecting the world via communication technology returns man to a mentality more like our tribal ancestors (I.e. 'the global village').
He also has some very interesting narratives about how new technologies create pain as they are introduced to the world, going back to stirrups, the printing press, and other historical examples.
Some of his books are full of illustrations and are generally very strange and forward thinking; most of all, McLuhan was an extremely creative person with an agile mind and mischievous sense of humor. You can get the sense that much of what he did was trolling the media & academia at some level. And that's where his quirky PR personality comes in. Above all, he was enjoying himself and his 30minutes of fame. Nothing wrong with that!