Hallucinating McLuhan
Courtesy of Advertising Age’s Agency of the Year comes this short clip of Terence McKenna on Marshall McLuhan [below], uploaded to You Tube exactly one day after The Wall Street Journal published, in his Five Best book column, Steve Cone’s top five books on “the secrets of selling” [including marketing, advertising, etc], of which McLuhan’s Understanding Media is the top choice.
Steve Cone, author of “Steal These Ideas: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star,” describes McLuhan as a “genius who understood why mass media holds us in its grip and never lets go,” similar to the effect of drugs, if you will. Which is precisely McKenna’s point, who compares media with drugs with his usual eloquence.
The bottom line, and running the risk of becoming repetitive, is that the thorough understanding of the effects of media is essential to navigate the modern world of communications, for which McLuhan seemed to be preparing us four decades ago. Understanding media under McLuhan’s vision oftentimes stands at the opposite end of the traditional view focused mainly on reach and frequency [advertising, marketing, etc.] or on the effects of particular genres i.e. violence [academia]. We should welcome all points of view about McLuhan’s work because, regardless of whether it was right or wrong, it pointed towards an important direction as agreed in this case by two professionals coming from two radically different camps.
If you have a few more minutes, check out Wired Magazine’s May 2000 article on Terence McKenna, a truly amazing piece.