Marshall McLuhan explains the future of ads and the internet in 1966(paleofuture.com)
paleofuture.com
Marshall McLuhan explains the future of ads and the internet in 1966
https://paleofuture.com/blog/2023/1/11/marshall-mcluhan-on-the-future-of-ads-and-the-internet
17 comments
McLuhan was before my time. In the 70's, the person to read was Alvin Toffler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock
[deleted]
> “Where advertising is heading is quite simply into a world where the ad will become a substitute for the product and all the satisfactions will be derived informationally from the ad and the product will be merely a number in some file somewhere,” McLuhan continued.
The computer mouse I bought recently gives me great satisfaction, and I've never once derived satisfaction from any ads for it.
Also, the piece goes on, doing something I dislike but which I've never seen dissected quite so obviously:
> There are a lot of different ways to interpret McLuhan here, especially when it comes to the “product” being “merely a number in a file somewhere.” Is this a way to talk about digital goods? Or, as another way to look at it, is the ad the product to begin with?
Or was he saying what he meant, in the manner of a normal adult speaking the language with which they're most comfortable, and "interpreting" him like is stuffing words in his mouth. Never mind that the words he spoke were fatuous and transparently wrong, I am foursquare opposed to "interpreting" people into saying things they blatantly never said. It's Minitrue without the memory hole: We don't have to erase the words if we're free to "interpret" them to mean absolutely anything we want.
Yes, every act of communication is interpreted. I'm opposed to dishonest "interpretation" which disregards the plain meaning.
The computer mouse I bought recently gives me great satisfaction, and I've never once derived satisfaction from any ads for it.
Also, the piece goes on, doing something I dislike but which I've never seen dissected quite so obviously:
> There are a lot of different ways to interpret McLuhan here, especially when it comes to the “product” being “merely a number in a file somewhere.” Is this a way to talk about digital goods? Or, as another way to look at it, is the ad the product to begin with?
Or was he saying what he meant, in the manner of a normal adult speaking the language with which they're most comfortable, and "interpreting" him like is stuffing words in his mouth. Never mind that the words he spoke were fatuous and transparently wrong, I am foursquare opposed to "interpreting" people into saying things they blatantly never said. It's Minitrue without the memory hole: We don't have to erase the words if we're free to "interpret" them to mean absolutely anything we want.
Yes, every act of communication is interpreted. I'm opposed to dishonest "interpretation" which disregards the plain meaning.
> The computer mouse I bought recently gives me great satisfaction, and I've never once derived satisfaction from any ads for it.
Respectfully, you are keying in on rather mundane purchase to argue against his claim. All he’s saying that interest in a brand will supersede the interest in the actual product. The funny part is that it’s blatantly obvious today, but maybe not so much during his time. As a speaker, I do agree with you though, he had a knack for pointing out the obvious for people who would encounter his material fifty years later.
Respectfully, you are keying in on rather mundane purchase to argue against his claim. All he’s saying that interest in a brand will supersede the interest in the actual product. The funny part is that it’s blatantly obvious today, but maybe not so much during his time. As a speaker, I do agree with you though, he had a knack for pointing out the obvious for people who would encounter his material fifty years later.
What McLuhan meant there was brand appeal. The guy with the Rolex is not wearing it, because a Rolex is such a great watch, although he might claim it is. He is wearing it, because of the symbolic value this watch has for him.
There are many products today where this symbolic value outweighs the practical value. E.g. I recall the whole Beats by Dr. Dre Headphone hype. As a musician and audio engineer I know what good headphones sound like and as I planned to get a good pair in that price bracket anyways, I decided to check on them. They sounded literally a magnitude cheaper than they were, yet many people swore this was the best thing since sliced bread. They paid for the brand appeal and for them the brand appeal was part of the use value.
There are many products today where this symbolic value outweighs the practical value. E.g. I recall the whole Beats by Dr. Dre Headphone hype. As a musician and audio engineer I know what good headphones sound like and as I planned to get a good pair in that price bracket anyways, I decided to check on them. They sounded literally a magnitude cheaper than they were, yet many people swore this was the best thing since sliced bread. They paid for the brand appeal and for them the brand appeal was part of the use value.
> What McLuhan meant there was brand appeal. The guy with the Rolex is not wearing it, because a Rolex is such a great watch, although he might claim it is. He is wearing it, because of the symbolic value this watch has for him.
My point is that relatively few items work like this. Literally nobody sees my mouse: I work from home and nobody I live with cares about the brand of mouse I have. Your analysis only works for certain kinds of prestige products, where the brand is part of the price, and fails for anything that has to be useful.
My point is that relatively few items work like this. Literally nobody sees my mouse: I work from home and nobody I live with cares about the brand of mouse I have. Your analysis only works for certain kinds of prestige products, where the brand is part of the price, and fails for anything that has to be useful.
The idea of marketing is that it influences your buying decision. The Rolex guy thinks he is buying a great watch. We see what is really going on.
The thing is: we are not immune to that and when it happens to us, we will just think we are on top of it as well.
Products deliver more than just the utility value, otherwise men would buy the "female" variant of a product if it was cheaper, but they are not doing it.
The thing is: we are not immune to that and when it happens to us, we will just think we are on top of it as well.
Products deliver more than just the utility value, otherwise men would buy the "female" variant of a product if it was cheaper, but they are not doing it.
I agree, with the caveat that an appropriately explicitly flagged as a deliberate reinterpretation which clearly differs from the intended meaning, is something that I think can be artfully done, to good effect.
But when doing this, one should be clear that this alternate meaning is to be attributed to either the person doing the reinterpretation, or to a fictional character of their creation, merely inspired by original quote.
But when doing this, one should be clear that this alternate meaning is to be attributed to either the person doing the reinterpretation, or to a fictional character of their creation, merely inspired by original quote.
> No relief, no perspective, no vanishing point where the gaze might risk losing itself, but a total screen where, in their uninterrupted display, the billboards and the products themselves act as equivalent and successive signs.
- Jean Baudrillard, "Hypermarket and Hypercommodity." Simulacra and Simulation, 1981.
Astonishing to think that McLuhan presaged this thinker by almost 20 years. It is interesting to generalize the phenomenon - that of, to again quote Baudrillard, "substituting the signs of the real for the real."
It was well understood that mere simulacra (in the original, pre-Baudrillard sense of the term - a representation of a person) were not to be conflated for the person they referred to themselves; the fidelity and character of classical, pre-digital media were sufficiently distinct from "real world" perceptual cues to make this clear.
Humanity was, in some way, ineffable; one could only point to it through books and brush strokes, or otherwise witness it and come to one's own judgments of another's character in person. However, in the present day, when every minutiae of every day being can be captured in 4K, paused, rewound, and replayed, we now find ourselves content to mistake that assemblage of pixels on a screen for an actual person, despite McLuhan boldly proclaiming in 1977 that "on the air, we do not have any physical body." [0]
Let us return to McLuhan now, into "a world where the [profile] will become a substitute for the [person] and all the satisfactions will be derived informationally from the [profile] and the [person] will be merely a number in some file somewhere."
Substitutions my own. Stark. In Baudrillard's words, indeed referencing McLuhan:
> The medium itself is no longer identifiable as such, and the confusion of the medium and the message is the first great formula of this new era.
- Baudrillard, "The End of the Panopticon." Simulacra and Simulation, 1981.
What makes this especially pernicious is how the mere presence of the new digital and social media are fundamentally intertwined with reality, in the same way an observer becomes a part of their own experiment by virtue of the act of observation itself perturbing the system: "It becomes more complicated because this family fell apart during the filming: a crisis erupted, the Louds separated, etc. Whence that insoluble controversy: was TV itself responsible? What would have happened if TV hadn't been there?" (Baudrillard)
What becomes of the self under constant surveillance and observation? Is it the same self, or one conditioned by the media, and those who operate it? Consider that humanity has been under this condition for over at least a decade now, in which people are content with having many (all?) aspects of their lives documented for the world to see, whereas privacy and pseudonymity used to be the norm until the Facebook era.
[0] https://www.tvo.org/transcript/155847
- Jean Baudrillard, "Hypermarket and Hypercommodity." Simulacra and Simulation, 1981.
Astonishing to think that McLuhan presaged this thinker by almost 20 years. It is interesting to generalize the phenomenon - that of, to again quote Baudrillard, "substituting the signs of the real for the real."
It was well understood that mere simulacra (in the original, pre-Baudrillard sense of the term - a representation of a person) were not to be conflated for the person they referred to themselves; the fidelity and character of classical, pre-digital media were sufficiently distinct from "real world" perceptual cues to make this clear.
Humanity was, in some way, ineffable; one could only point to it through books and brush strokes, or otherwise witness it and come to one's own judgments of another's character in person. However, in the present day, when every minutiae of every day being can be captured in 4K, paused, rewound, and replayed, we now find ourselves content to mistake that assemblage of pixels on a screen for an actual person, despite McLuhan boldly proclaiming in 1977 that "on the air, we do not have any physical body." [0]
Let us return to McLuhan now, into "a world where the [profile] will become a substitute for the [person] and all the satisfactions will be derived informationally from the [profile] and the [person] will be merely a number in some file somewhere."
Substitutions my own. Stark. In Baudrillard's words, indeed referencing McLuhan:
> The medium itself is no longer identifiable as such, and the confusion of the medium and the message is the first great formula of this new era.
- Baudrillard, "The End of the Panopticon." Simulacra and Simulation, 1981.
What makes this especially pernicious is how the mere presence of the new digital and social media are fundamentally intertwined with reality, in the same way an observer becomes a part of their own experiment by virtue of the act of observation itself perturbing the system: "It becomes more complicated because this family fell apart during the filming: a crisis erupted, the Louds separated, etc. Whence that insoluble controversy: was TV itself responsible? What would have happened if TV hadn't been there?" (Baudrillard)
What becomes of the self under constant surveillance and observation? Is it the same self, or one conditioned by the media, and those who operate it? Consider that humanity has been under this condition for over at least a decade now, in which people are content with having many (all?) aspects of their lives documented for the world to see, whereas privacy and pseudonymity used to be the norm until the Facebook era.
[0] https://www.tvo.org/transcript/155847
> It was well understood that mere simulacra (in the original, pre-Baudrillard sense of the term - a representation of a person) were not to be conflated for the person they referred to themselves; the fidelity and character of classical, pre-digital media were sufficiently distinct from "real world" perceptual cues to make this clear.
This is the big concept being questioned today. Why is the "in person" version of a human the canonical "real" version, whilst that person over a telephone, or a Skype screen, or a ChatGPT imitation a "fake" version? Also, for our picture of reality, why is hearing about the world through the rumors of your fellow villagers a more realistic version of the world that one filtered through social media?
This is the big concept being questioned today. Why is the "in person" version of a human the canonical "real" version, whilst that person over a telephone, or a Skype screen, or a ChatGPT imitation a "fake" version? Also, for our picture of reality, why is hearing about the world through the rumors of your fellow villagers a more realistic version of the world that one filtered through social media?
I see. People who cannot afford Internet are not real people. After all, they do not have a "number in some file somewhere."
What I mean is that someone's online self is one projection of the self, and someone's offline self is another projection of the self. Neither is the "true real self", as suggested by some of the people you quoted.
Basically, some of the philosophers you quoted suggest a dystopian progress by which we're getting more and more fake by putting on more layers (in person -> phone -> TV -> social media). I don't think this has to be the interpretation.
Basically, some of the philosophers you quoted suggest a dystopian progress by which we're getting more and more fake by putting on more layers (in person -> phone -> TV -> social media). I don't think this has to be the interpretation.
You're being disingenuous in order to prop up your political philosophy.
Stop exercising your privilege to silence the marginalized voice of an ethnic minority.
And now you're simply posting in bad faith. Good job making philosophers look like nitwits, I suppose.
The only one posting in bad faith is you. You have brought literally nothing substantive to the conversation - no citations, no rebuttals, no arguments, no positions.
Allow me to recapitulate your position for you - you are categorically wrong, on all counts. Try getting an education to learn why.
Allow me to recapitulate your position for you - you are categorically wrong, on all counts. Try getting an education to learn why.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34245167