First of all, sorry to retrieve this discussion from the obsolescence, but it’s a theme of great interest for me. Many here have pointed the variety of sources of the idea of extension. In some of them it appears sometimes just in a phrase and in others it gains more attention and maybe an attempt to define the concept (like Erns Kapp). Despite that and the search for the source of McLuhan usage of the idea of “extension”, it’s interesting to recall that he cites many people who write about it, like Emmerson, Lewis Mumford, Buckminster Fuller, Teilhard de Chardin, Edward T. Hall, Henri Bergson, Ernst Cassirer, Sigmund Freud and many others.
I guess McLuhan himself is one of the first (if not the first) to address and to search this variety. The expression “extensions of man” is the subtitle of his book, he uses the term “extension” more than 350 times there, and even so we have so few texts about this problem.
The idea of “extensions of man” is very problematic and can guide us to a series of discussions that does not appear entirely even in anthropology of technology or in philosophy of technology:
(1) What are the differences between terms like extension, exteriorization, prosthesis, projection and simulation? Here we find the need for an investigation into the nomenclature, because if we do not know what we’re dealing with, we certainly will encounter fatal difficulties in advancing to a concept.
(2) Is all technology an extension of the human? This question leads to what we are considering as technology and therefore the concept of media. Moreover, the question of what is extended: the human sensory, muscles, or organs, as in Aristotle and McLuhan, or is the technology itself, as in Jacques Ellul? What does it mean that the media are extensions of our consciousness?
(3) The term carries with it a proposed elimination of the separation between man and machine, between biological and technological? Both Freud, Bergson, Teilhard, Mumford, and Hall, according to Alice Rae in McLuhan’s Unconscious (2008), see the extensions in terms of an evolutionary process. And so, increasingly blurring the differences between what is technology and what is organic, that is, to a no-separation. Rae (2008) “If the technology is no more than an evolutionary adaptation, then there is no distinction to be found between an organ such as the eye and a technology such as the telescope.”.
(4) The causal relationship of technology and the concept of technological determinism. The basic definition of determinism is that technological development determines social dynamics and indicates the direction of cultural change. Since Innis and McLuhan view that technologies exert a greater influence than “means-ends” which are not always predictable or conscious they are often accused of being technological determinists. Can we get rid of determinism? Can determinism be seen as an epistemological approach, and/or as a metaphysical question?
(5) Are the extensions essentially physical objects? How to deal with objects that have a greater relationship with the function status? For McLuhan, money, for example, can be seen as an extension, for «In the beginning, its function of extending the grasp of men from their nearest staples and commodities to more distant ones is very slight» (UM, p. 181)
Its physical characteristic relegates a priority for the notion of extension, since the material aspect of money is almost meaningless. Money can be made of gold, salt, plastic as a credit card, or any other material, therefore it’s largely a social convention.
(6) We consider the use of animals and humans as extensions?
(7) Can natural objects such as stones, pieces of wood, or water be considered extensions or only those built or modified by humans? These questions are just a sample of the importance and where the issue of extensions can lead us, and I believe it is a good point for our discussion.
Thanks for reading it.
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Rodrigo Miranda Barbosa
Doctorate student in Communication
Universidade de Brasília (UnB)
Brazil
+55 61 9959-8862
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