McLuhan and “technological determinism”

Just writing the abstract for the lecture on McLuhan in Brazil next summer, and I was reminded of the widespread meme that McLuhan is a “technological determinist.” No, he isn’t.

It’s not surprising that this idea is so widespread. McLuhan’s chief idea is the overwhelming power of background conditions over any conscious surface content. The content of television shows is no more important than graffiti on an atomic bomb, and so forth. We see this idea not only in the signature phrase “the medium is the message,” but also his praise of rhetoric and grammar in the old Trivium over dialectic, as well as his greater interest in formal than in efficient causation.

However, unlike Heidegger (another thinker obsessed with the greater importance of the background than the surface), McLuhan is in no way an advocate of passive awaiting. While it is true that the background medium is all-important for McLuhan, he also thinks it is well within our power to change the background medium. For McLuhan unlike Heidegger, it’s not Being itself that sends epochs. It’s primarily artists, but ultimately anyone else who generates new media.

Stated differently, McLuhan is not anti-free will, he’s simply anti-content. Content is trivial for McLuhan, whether it be that of a television show or that of a logical argument. The background conditions of anything are where the action lies.

Like any intellectual thesis, this one can be challenged and contested. But it should not be confused with determinism. Every medium, for McLuhan, eventually flips into its opposite. But that “opposite” medium can take countless different forms, and it is up to humans to decide what form. (If anything, McLuhan is too human-centered, refusing to extend his media laws beyond the scope of human artifacts/language.)