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McLuhan's message resonates with COM prof
Social impact of Internet extends beyond e-mails and e-commerce

By David J. Craig

When media analyst and pop culture icon Marshall McLuhan professed in the 1960s that "the medium is the message," he might have been describing his penchant for self-promotion as well as technology's power to transform society. His writings, after all, are notoriously overzealous and shoddily researched.

	Marshall McLuhan. Photo courtesy of the Video McLuhan Web site

But history has proven McLuhan prescient, according to Tobe Berkovitz, a COM associate professor of mass communication. He spoke about the controversial figure during a Food for Thought Luncheon Series lecture at Marsh Chapel on February 27. Berkovitz said concepts McLuhan articulated nearly 40 years ago -- such as the global village and hybrid technologies -- help explain how the Internet is reshaping everything from economies to interpersonal relationships to political ideologies.

One of McLuhan's central theses was that people are "almost totally unaware" of the most profound effects of technology and the media, said Berkovitz, a frequent commentator on politics and the media. "He thought we were numbed by technology because it's all around us, and is constantly working on us."

The Internet, of course, has had an impact on society in ways that are impossible not to recognize. Today, e-mail allows people from different parts of the world to form virtual communities online, people can shop without leaving home, and privacy and intellectual property issues raised by the Internet appear in newspapers every day.

But the Internet will bring about more powerful and widespread changes that are difficult for most people to comprehend, according to Berkovitz. A change McLuhan predicted was the emergence of the global village, which "essentially means that the world is going to become one village and that time and space will begin to disappear," he said. "One impact of electronic communication, of course, is that everything seems to happen at once. In politics, for instance, as soon as a story breaks, it's live on cable and polls are being conducted.

"The Internet will multiply this out until we face real questions about how we perceive time and space," he continued. "In the future, will we feel as if the world is really in our living room? And if so, will we regard that world as merely a pseudoworld, or will we accept it as a version of reality?"

Before such dramatic changes in our world view can take root, however, said Berkovitz, there must occur what McLuhan called a revolutionary "break boundary," which often is spurred by the combination of cutting-edge technologies.

"I think a real break boundary is going to occur when the Internet merges with television and all the wireless technology we have," he said. "Right now, computer use for most people is very isolated. But my guess is that in about five years we're going to start to see a real evolution. Instead of sitting by yourself in front of a little computer screen, you may be in front of a wide-screen television and there is going to be real, immediate interactivity between individuals."

Tobe Berkovitz. Photo by Vernon Doucette

Berkovitz predicted that dramatic social changes also will occur when there emerges a personality who can communicate via the Internet as masterfully as Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Adolf Hitler did through radio, and Ronald Reagan did through television.

"We have not yet seen the first star of the Internet," he said. "I think it's just a matter of time until we do. Then it will be interesting to see how that affects politics, religion, and our ideological beliefs."

So, can ordinary people shape the way technologies such as the Internet affect their lives in the future? McLuhan, who died in 1980 and for the bulk of his career was a professor at the University of Toronto, didn't think so, at least at the time of his groundbreaking 1964 publication Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. For that reason, as well as for his lack of academic rigor and nonlinear writing style, McLuhan's teachings are held in contempt by scholars "almost uniformly," said Berkovitz.

"Academics never bought the concept of technological determinism," he said. "It is antihumanistic, according to some people, because it says that we are shaped by our tools rather than that we have the ability to shape our world through our tools.

"Of course, McLuhan did have a real habit of overstating his case," continued Berkovitz, who described his interest in McLuhan as "a strange hobby," and admitted that even McLuhan's best writing is "circular" and "brutal" to follow. "I don't think it's necessarily important whether McLuhan was right or wrong, but that he provides us with a framework for thinking about the Internet, and about technology and the media."

The Food for Thought Luncheon Series lectures, held in Marsh Chapel's Robinson Room from noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, are free and open to the public. For more information, call 353-3560. To listen to an audio recording of a lecture, visit www.bu.edu/chapel/ChapelWebpages/foodforthought.html.

9 March 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations