[Air-l] Seen Any Good McLuhan Cites Lately?

[Alex Kuskis]

There's no reason not to send this to the whole list, as I know there are
others besides myself on this list interested in the ideas of McLuhan.
Here is a posting by Dr. Paul Levinson from the Media Ecology list of
last September that addresses your question..........Alex
alex.kuskis at utoronto.ca

Message text written by INTERNET:mediaecology at ube.ubalt.edu
>I am aware that the idea of technologies as extensions of man can be
traced
back further than McLuhan but am nevertheless interested in this particular
connection if there is any.

Thanks,
Rune<

Thinkers who explicitly discussed technologies as extensions, prior to
McLuhan,
include Samuel Butler, 1865; Emerson, 1870;  Ernst Kapp, 1877;
Henri Bergson, 1911; Hendrik Van Loon, 1928; Stuart Chase, 1929;
Freud, 1930 -- see my Mind at Large, 1988, p. 149, for details.  The whole
book is a treatise on technology as an extension of the intellect (with
some
special attention to computers).

In my 1977-79 Media Ecology classes at NYU, I and just about everyone
else was talking about computers as extensions of the mind (see my
PhD diss, Human Replay, 1979, for more).  Engelbart was not specifically
discussed.

His importance indeed resides in his explication -- and implementation --
of what John Searles later called the "weak" AI model (AI as amplification
of mind rather than autonomous replacement).

Paul
www.sff.net/people/paullevinson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wendy Robinson" <wgrobin at uc.edu>
To: <Air-l at aoir.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 9:11 PM
Subject: [Air-l] Seen Any Good McLuhan Cites Lately?


> I'm trying to track down references (particularly fresh ones) to McLuhan's
> idea that media act as sensory extensions, as referenced in the subtitle
to
> _Understanding Media_.   At this time, I'm not especially interested in
the
> global village or in his idea that the medium is the message or in the
> other stuff easier to find on McLuhan.
>
> If you have suggestions and could please send them to me off-list, I would
> greatly appreciate it.  If the AoIR list is interested in the cumulative
> results, I will be glad to share the list that results at a later time.
>
> Thanks,
> Wendy Robinson
> wgrobin at uc.edu
> Asst Prof, Comm Dept
> Univ of Cincinnati