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 Mind,
Media and Society II (JAC 1002H)
Tuesday
evenings from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. beginning January 10, 2006
McLuhan Program Coach House, 39A Queen's Park Crescent East
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| Objectives |
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How
can we utilize media theories to understand human
processes, mind and societies? McLuhan's media
approaches will be used to explore how the mind
relates to the perception of the world we have
created, and how mental and social processes serve
as adaptations to media ecologies. McLuhan's
thinking and approaches to media and the evolution
of knowledge will be used
to examine relationships among material artefacts and ideas. Participants will practice an
interdisciplinary approach to research as a group
and individually. Through a combination
of seminars, playshops and participant-led sessions
the course will explore applications of the thinking
tools to things, situations and issues to gain new
awareness, insight and perceptions.
By the end of the course, participants will
be able to use the thinking tools to consider views
of issues different than typically presented by
the conventional mass media, business and government.
Note that Mind, Media and Society I is not
a pre-requisite for this course.
Learning
Outcomes
Through
the course, participants will:
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Attain
a fluency with McLuhan vocabulary, and in
particular, the appropriate meanings and
nuances of medium, message, content, figure,
ground, environment, anti-environment,
metaphor, media temperature, as well as the
four quadrants of the laws of media;
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Be
able to identify and use the five key
cognitive constructs employed by Marshall
McLuhan to create an anti-environment;
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Be
able to combine and apply the cognitive
constructs to a variety of subjects,
disciplines, events and circumstances, and to
explain their dynamics and effects;
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Be
able to critically question and probe the
conventional teachings and approaches of their
chosen discipline or research area in order to
discover new interpretations and avenues of
inquiry.
"When
I started this course I thought that I was a
lateral thinker because I believed in alternative
view points. I think now I have come to
the realization that believing
in non-mainstream ideas is not the same as
having your own. It seems like a simple
distinction, but I don't think I saw it
before." -
A student from the 2003 session.
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| Assignments
and Project |
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For
the most part, this is intended to be a
participatory class, insofar as the greatest
benefit from learning about the thinking tools is
achieved in actually using them. Course auditors
are allowed with the permission of the instructor,
but are required to submit a final presentation.
To
this end, 40% of the mark will be based on weekly
contribution and the applications assignments that
comprise the second half of the course. A total of
60% will be based on the final project – 40% for
the presentation, and 20% for the written
submission. The final project will ask
participants to select a medium that is relevant
to his or her field of interest or other study,
apply McLuhan's thinking tools and share the
discoveries, insights, new effects and subsequent
consequences. In addition, if there is a
difference between the typical approaches used in
the participant's discipline and the results
achieved through “Applied McLuhanistics,” this
difference should be identified, examined and form
part of the presentation. Students are expected to
demonstrate the integrated use of all five of the
cognitive constructs.
As
with the Mind, Media and Society I course, we will
strongly encourage class participants to maintain
a weblog, and participate in the course
weblog. (The weblog from 2004 is here.)
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Course Outline |
| Note:
Each
session is scheduled for approximately
2.5 hours, but occasionally runs
longer during class discussions.
During each session, examples and
exercises will be taken from current
events and relevant circumstances as
much as possible. Exploration topics
are subject to change. In addition to
the indicated readings, the instructor
will provide additional materials for
each session. |
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Session
1: McLuhan's language: Figure,
Ground, Medium, Message and more:
In
this session, McLuhan’s basic vocabulary
is introduced and explored. In particular,
the meaning of McLuhan’s most famous
aphorism, “the medium is the message” is
derived in detail, with its implications on
the entire field of media study. The ideas
of visual space and acoustic space
are introduced, with their implications
relative to the history of communications,
from ancient Greece to our time. |
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2: The effects of language, the
transformational power of metaphors, and cliché-probes:
This session begins to explore the duality
of spoken and written language, and the
effectual characteristics of oral vs.
literate forms. Beginning with an excerpt
from Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, we examine
first words, and then media, as metaphors
– not only figures of speech, but active
transformative agents. We then examine the
soporific effects of clichés (of all sorts)
and develop McLuhan’s technique of Cliché-Probes
to awaken awareness. |
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3: Introduction to the Laws of Media
and the tetrads: The Grand Unified Theorem
of McLuhan? The four aspects of the laws
of media are introduced and explored, with
in-class examples. The case is argued that
McLuhan's laws of media are universally
applicable to all human creations and
artefacts, and thus provide a common ground
for the study of effects. |
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4: Advanced Tetrads, How to Swim in a
Brainstorm, and Predicting the Future. Further
practical applications of the tetrads are
explored, including: their ability to
discover unasked questions and unperceived
effects; their use in brainstorming;
McLuhan-style "group therapy";
tetrad clusters, chains and determining
media equivalencies among unlike entities. |
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5: Media Temperature - Hot or Not? McLuhan's
notion of "media temperature" is
introduced and examined relative to the
effects of various human artefacts on
cognitive engagement. Examples are drawn
from poetry, art, music, and advertising.
Television is used as a case study of how
media temperature changes over time, and
with traumatic events. |
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6: Communications and Conversations
- Understanding why we misunderstand. (A
sample exploration.) The specific media
modes for spoken and written (oral and
literate) language are reviewed in detail.
The class is divided into playgroups and
invited to explore a situation in which one
or the other mode of communication is
typically used by inducing the law of
reversal and predicting the effects. This
session is used as an exemplar of the types
of explorations that will comprise the
remainder of the course. |
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Note:
Sessions 7 through 11 are in-seminar
explorations. Exploration topics are
subject to change and will be
confirmed during the term. For most of the
explorations, pre-reading and individual
preparation are required. The instructor
will provide suggested sources.
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7: The Future of Politics - Emergent
Transparency & the U.S. Election, including
selected readings from Lebkowsky &
Ratcliffe (eds.) Extreme Democracy. |
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8: The Future of Mass Media -
Personal Media for the Masses? |
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9: What is Reality via "A
Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell |
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10: The Future of Culture and
Telling Stories about Ourselves,
including selected readings from Galloway
(ed.) Space and Culture |
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11: The Future of Ideas and
Innovation, including selected readings
from Lessig, The Future of Ideas |
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| About
the Instructor |
| Derrick
de Kerckhove is Director of the McLuhan
Program in Culture & Technology and Professor
in the Department of French at the University of
Toronto. He received his Ph.D. in French Language
and Literature from the University of Toronto in
1975 and a Doctorat du 3e cycle in Sociology of
Art from the University of Tours (France) in 1979.
More...
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| Recommended
Reading List |
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•
Dibble, Julian. "A Rape in Cyberspace,"
Village Voice, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 51, December 21, 1993,
Available at
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html.
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Federman,
Mark. What is the meaning of "The medium
is the message?" Available at
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/article_mediumisthemessage.htm,
2002.
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Gordon,
W. Terrence. McLuhan for Beginners. New York:
Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., 1997.
(Optional)
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Lessig,
Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the
Commons in a Connected World, New York: Random
House, 2001.•
McLuhan,
Marshall. Culture Is Our Business. Toronto: McGraw-Hill
Book Co., 1970. (Optional)
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McLuhan,
Marshall. Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1964. (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8) Available at http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/overload/mcluhan/um.html.
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McLuhan,
Marshall and Fiore, Quentin. The Medium is the
Massage. New York: Random House, 1967.
(Optional)
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McLuhan,
Marshall and McLuhan, Eric. Laws of Media: The
New Science. Toronto: The University of Toronto
Press, 1988. (Chapters 3, 4 and 5)
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McLuhan,
Marshall and Watson, Wilfred. From Cliché
to Archetype. New York: Viking Press, 1970.
(Chapters: "Clichés as Probes";
optionally: "Absurd, Theater of the,"
"Cliché as Breakdown," "Eye,
Ear," "Jokes," "Matching
Sense" )
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Norden,
Eric. "A Candid Conversation with the High
Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media. Playboy, March 1969. Available at http://www.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/overload/mcluhan/pb.html
Students
may also find the essay, "On
Reading McLuhan," useful.
Additional readings will be provided throughout
the course by the instructor.
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