Electric Tempest - Marshall McLuhan
Channel: Transition21
Date: 2019-02-06

The McLuhan family in the global theater, where all the world's a sage.

A remix of excerpts taken from Richard Altman's ( @Mitzkahdrinnen ) forthcoming film McLuhan Unclaimed: I Am A Winnipigeon.

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Shakespeare as sub-plot: McLuhan's family life completes an 'emotion of multitude' King Lear style, allowing for a juxtaposed media analysis: contrasting the introduction of the printing press in Shakespeare's time to its obsolescence in McLuhan's time.

Shakespeare's play, The Tempest, enhances our insights into the impacts of media and technology in the times leading up to and including those of Shakespeare. The impact of science and technology as represented by the book learning of Prospero and its flip into the prosperity and global reach of Elizabethan England is described. The press and many other mechanical devices were improving the quality of life in Shakespeare’s time. Ocean sailing ships revealed “a brave new world” across the ocean and made the riches of the whole globe available. Science also expanded the view of the universe into outer space and showed that the world was governed by mathematical precision that allowed humankind to begin to control their environment. The Tempest reflects these changes in the allegoric space of Prospero’s island. Prospero represents learning and the magic of science whereas his antagonist Caliban represents untamed nature. 

From the perspective of McLuhan’s Laws of Media with its concern with enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval and flip or reversal. Just as Prospero self-obsolesced his powers as a wizard McLuhan obsolesces the content analysis of his academic predecessors.