McLuhan went to great lengths to try to assert that television was a «tactile» medium — but FAILED.
The «scanning finger» was one of his attempts to make this «argument.» Another was the «brain-scans» that likened watching television to getting a «full-body massage.»
The result all the book title and aphorisms regarding «the medium is the massage» (or mass-age, which is far more accurate.)
The failure of this attempts was highlighted by Leon Surette at the MM100 conference — perhaps there is a recording of his session, if you missed it. Surette was a McLuhan PhD student who participated in a graduate seminar in 1960-61 in which McLuhan tried on his various arguments but apparently didn’t convince anyone. He discussed that seminar in his presentation and afterwards at lunch with me.
Clearly television is *both* a visual and auditory medium — so it is different from both «light-through» and «light-on» visual media, as it is different from radio, movies, etc. But that doesn’t make it *tactile*!
Remember what McLuhan was looking for was a NEW medium that would promote «pattern recognition» as well as assist people in overcoming the «discarnate» experience of electric media.
By promoting «tactility» McLuhan was trying to work towards a richer balance of the senses and, indeed, an «interplay» between-among them — which would (formally) *cause* a much more «reality» aware sensibility.
He was looking for a medium that would enhance/retrieve/flip-into a more «hands-on» relationship to the world — pointing towards his «Christian Humanist» approach and even to the *distributist* politics/economics that he embraced in his youth, with its origins in Catholic Social Teaching.
Although *television* failed to meet his criteria, I argue that since TYPING — as I am doing right now — is clearly TACTILE and, therefore, the *Internet* should be considered as a candidate for McLuhan’s goals . . . even if he clearly did *not* anticipate it.
I will be covering these topics in my book THE DIGITAL BOMB.
Perhaps the greatest part of the unfinished work from his life is what I’d call the EXPERIMENTAL McLuhan. There is much work to be done, which goes far beyond attempts to «interpret» McLuhan and would involve actually exploring the impact of the sensory-balance for media that he never experienced.
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
Blog de Octavio Islas 