McLuhan, Miscellaneous Recordings, 1966

Bob’s Notes

NOTE: Timing based ON  Payday archives.

Jan.17/2015  1177118-9-1  1966  Miscellaneous recordings with Ralph Baldwin and Tony Schwartz:
(Part 18 at 5:00)

fish don't know anything about water
translation in art forms
McLuhan wonders what business he is in 
5:42

definition of McLuhan's "media consulting" (the occult) 
8:17

McLuhan admits he can't sell his knowledge to businessmen too easily 
10:56




Jan.17/2015  1177319-3-1  1966  Miscellaneous fragments:
(Part 18 at 13:16)


Cardinal Newman's idea of the "university" (no subjects)
Meister Eckhart's "university of being" 
13:43

print evoked an obsession with the human Past (Hamlet the "revenger" was alienated from the Present) 15:14
Milton's PARADISE LOST was the peak of this trend (the whole of human society became a rearview mirror to look at the Garden of Eden) 
15:30

it reached a parody of itself in the next century with the "graveyard school of poetry", Cromwell, and using the "dead Present" as a rearview mirror 
15:51

ended with the "landscape poetry" of the Romantics (Nature was the mirror for the mind of man, liberated people from History) 
16:10

the "rearview mirror" (going from the unknown to the known - using the mirror on Gorgon - whereas the artist doesn't use a mirror) 
16:37


for the rest of this particular recording, see notes for the first section of the Oct.11/14 broadcast 
17:10


"Today" show with Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters (replay of the first section of the Oct.25/2014 broadcast) 
25:10

ads substitute for the products
McLuhan explains why he is not looking for meaning/conclusions and not being "moralistic" 
26:39

why young people are not goal-oriented
businessmen want to drop out
the meaning of LSD for youth (want to erase/scrub the old private identity/tape) 
29:27

Hugh Downs asks McLuhan if he is optimistic 
29:50

McLuhan recommends Bucky Fuller as a wise "comprehensivist" 
30:57

McLuhan suggests discovery over instruction/stenciling in education and turning the students into research teams 31:23


Jan.17/2015 1177116-3-1  1966  Miscellaneous fragments edited by Tony Schwartz:
(Part 18 at 33:16)

can't visualize on the telephone and feel isolated and alone
the telephone can be used to teach mathematics
"people don't study the media, only the inputs"
reading is a narcotic for most people
print created technologically the "Public" vs. "mass man"
McLuhan says he supports reading books because he's a professor of literature 
36:20

we're stressing dialogue/probing now ("non-literary procedure" started by Baudelaire and Symbolism) vs. packaging
36:33

Cezanne started new post-visual painting at the same time as Baudrillard 
37:20

educational system has been limited to the visual sense and is therefore obsolete
"we now glorify the unconscious, unawareness, and the instinctive life" 
38:21

the interviewer says McLuhan DOES have a point of view 
38:35

the man in a space capsule does not have a point of view but has many rapidly changing points of view 
39:14

McLuhan explains his "do-it-yourself" kit and the interviewer becomes frightened 
39:33

the interviewer accuses McLuhan of being a "liberator" (McLuhan responds by saying, "at the present time") 
40:36

today one can't make connections between events (the telegraph creates an environment, not a story) 
41:35

the interviewer reads some GREAT quotations by McLuhan and McLuhan responds by saying they are not correct ("that's mere matching") 
42:26

the interviewer asks whether McLuhan is part of the tradition of the prankster ("playing Puck") 
43:14

"visual rationality" is explained 
43:39

McLuhan says "I really don't have any strong feelings about this because it's a situation that will tend to correct itself in time, but there's a lot of waste in the meanwhile" 
44:26

the FIGURE of reading and writing as a skill among the other CLICHE technologies 
44:37

today we have to understand the grammars of many media... people use environments they have no knowledge of the processes that make them nor of the means to express themselves through them 
44:55

"Norman McLaren makes a tremendous break with ordinary film by painting directly on to the film making the audience the screen instead of the camera eye - the child feels masterful doing this making a world that doesn't correspond to some other world (like the photograph) as the composer does working with sound, making a melody" 
45:23

"this is the largest switch-over - from matching to making... in the whole history of education" 
46:00

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