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In grad school, I'm currently reading about the late communications theorist Marshall McLuhan, he of "the medium is the message" and other prescient quotations (one of my favorites: "The future of the book is the blurb." How did he know?).
McLuhan had our number, we typecasters, long before we even existed. In this interview from 1969, he explains exactly what drives us to type, scan, and post:
Most people... still cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of their world. By this I mean to say that because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. Because we are benumbed by any new technology — which in turn creates a totally new environment — we tend to make the old environment more visible; we do so by turning it into an art form and by attaching ourselves to the objects and atmosphere that characterized it, just as we’ve done with jazz, and as we’re now doing with the garbage of the mechanical environment via pop art.
... and with typecasting. Touché.
5 comments:
So the typosphere is the negative space against which the technosphere is highlighted? And here I thought we were just a bunch of oddballs goofing on the keys. I didn't know we was making the ART. :-)
...which is an interesting inversion of T.S. Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent, which suggests that modern creativity redefines that which has gone before.
...nothin'. And here I thought we had a for-real intellectual discussion in the works.
Strikethru has become a deserted outpost of typospheria, due to the lack of typewriter posts.
I've been a fan of McLuhan for years, but I don't presume to be intellectual enough to stand my own ground in a discussion with a serious media studies major.
I think Strikethru's observation of McLuhan's forecasting of typecasting (!) is right on. His main point is that innovation is invisible to all but those on the cutting edge, which is an observation also relevant to those wanting to make a quick buck on the Next Big Thing. It ain't so easy, being a seer, or being in the right place at the right time to steer the ship of culture in another direction.
As for lack of typecasting, I'm guilty as charged. I thought a brief bit about dragging a typer onto the Amtrak during our recent trip, but decided against it because I'd also have to drag it from the station to the hotel, etc.
~Joe
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