Marshall McLuhans Understanding Media Essay -- McLuhan Understanding

Marshall McLuhans apprehensiveness MediaIn his groundbreaking work, Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan posits that technologies in the electrical advance rendered it impossible for the individual to live aloof anymore . Over the course of the late 19th to primal 20th centuries, while an increasing presence of electric machines in occasional life irrefutably signaled our nations arrival into the electric age, societys central nervous system was technologically extended to involve individually individual in the whole of mankind, McLuhan states (20). Previously disconnected, isolated individuals and groups suddenly became compressed, involved in each others lives, and unified into a network. As opposed to the preceding mechanical age, this was an age that sought wholeness-- an aspiration that McLuhan refers to as a natural addendum of electric technology (21). McLuhan commits that great progress was made in the electric age that wholeness was sought and worked towards eagerl y. However, at the turn of the century, three individualsthe philosopher, historian, and writer Henry Adams, the author Henry James, and the escape artist Harry Houdiniseemed to believe society was falling short of the goals that McLuhan claims it held. To these artists, the dreams of making everything seem attainable and everyone accessible were unrealistic complete global unification, involvement, and wholeness served as a plunder for disintegrating interpersonal relations. These American artists saw technology non so much as a device that brings individuals together, but rather as a means of escaping each other, individual social lives, as well as the constraints of the natural world. The Autobiography of Henry Adams, first printed privately in 19... ... not yield wholeness, grant individual freedom, and give Americans the infinite mobility they dream of. On the contrary, technology may cause separation, destruction, and confinement. The question of whether future technologi es will unite individuals peacefully or destroy civilizations ruthlessly is just as relevant, if not in fact more pressing today, at the turn of the twenty-first century, with a global presence of weapons of mass destruction haunting America, than it was at the turn of the 20th century. Based on his law of acceleration and increase danger, Adams might be surprised that America withstood two world wars and level entered the 21st century. But since we have, there is reason to hope that individuals and fellow nations may continue to defy Adams fears that we may continue to jump headfirst into the future, and in doing so, eventually make progress.