Abstract of the Commemorative lecture
Norbert Wiener and Marshal McLuhan - Communication Revolution
We will study the texts of Norbert Wiener and Marshal McLuhan and discover the common denominator between the two thinkers (Mix-media... simulation of electronics and human nerve system... indeterminism...). Wiener used these characteristics as the micro-form to construct the technical interior of the electronic age, whereas McLuhan used them as the macro-form to interpret the psychological and sociological exterior of the electronic age.
World peace and survival of the earth is public interest number 1 and must be interest number 1 of public television.What we need now is a champion of free trade, who will form a Video Common Market modeled after the European Common Market in it's spirit and procedure. McLuhan's premature high hope for the Global Village via TV is based on an obscure book, "The Bias of Communication", by H. A. Innis (1951) which traced the origin of nationalism to the invention of movable type. But, ironically, today's video culture is far more nationalistic than print media. You cannot escape Camus or Sartre in a book store. But do you remember seeing a production of French TV recently? TV cameras are so busily following the latest outbreaks of violence that kids, who receive most of their education from TV, think that Switzerland and Norway are chunks of real estate lying somewhere in the Milky Way.
