reading McLuhan by the Siphraya Pier

280520113997, originally uploaded by AliaK.

lunch by the Siphraya Pier, Bangkok. reading McLuhan's interview from late 1960s and thinking of it related to the Jean M Auel Earth's Children's series books I've read - am reading her latest "The Land of the Painted Caves" during this trip. so his ideas on the development of the phonetic language are interesting. I think he's talking about more recent times (& Homo sapiens / modern humans - probably around 3500 years ago up until today). but since I've just finished the book - which is about the period when both Neanderthal & CroMagnon man/humanoids are living together on Earth, I was relating his ideas back to the ideas in the book. Auel's books have talked about the sign language and large, communal memories of Neanderthal man (previous to CroMagnon) - they didn't have developed speech - or the ability to talk properly apart from a few words/sounds. so perhaps McLuhan's ideas mean we get the best of both worlds - memory outsourced to writing. I think Erik Davis has talked about these things in his Techgnosis book too iirc. I also liked how in the McLuhan article he was talking about such a "connected world" & computers and communication networks in the early 1960s! well, he did pretty much invent "communication studies" type uni classes, but still, you could read this article with today's technology in mind and it would still be relevant - if not even more today than in the '60s

anyway, a lovely afternoon - lunch, reading and writing and ideas.
...

tonight I've been listening to some of this talk and reading the article - it ties in to the book/ideas of this trip / today's reading also : Scott Taylor and Bob Dobbs discuss "FIBONACCI AND THE ECSTATIC DIGITAL CLUB SCENE" http://bit.ly/iy9YNK http://bit.ly/jbSrZP the "anti-cave cave" - they're talking of techno club as a modern cave with paintings on the walls (glowing lights) as well as mentions of the more obvious comparison to Plato's cave & the archetypes of reality, and McLuhan's ideas of advertising and tv being the "cave paintings" of our modern world.

[quote]The McLuhan Dew-Line; and, punning on that title, he has also originated a series of recordings called “The Marshall McLuhan Dew-Line Plattertudes”.[/quote]

McLuhan Dew-Line newsletters ad - love some of the topics: future editions will discuss.. "the end of history via the computer" "the end of the stock exchange via the computer" "the satellite as the end of Nature" "why the 'backward' countries will inevitably dominate the western world"

& I watched this video "I'm not beer" - mentions Bob Dylan, McLuhan, and Bob Dobbs

I also came across this : LITERARY/AESTHETIC CLICHÉ-PROBES IN THE AMERICAN CLASSROOM-WITHOUT-WALLS whilst searching for online versions of the McLuhan Dew-Line newsletters. & some more essays by Bob Dobb's on McLuhan - I haven't read these yet - might try the McLuhan and Holeopathic Quadrophrenia essay (every time I heard it on the not beer video above I kept thinking of the band Quadrophonia - different word, but close enough for my tired mind)

2011 is the 100th anniversary of McLuhan's birthday. there's a few events celebrating this : McLuhan 2011 (this weekend - just heard about it) and McLuhan on Maui has phone conferences feb-dec 2011 and an in-person conference later in the year (december) their about page has the details - there seems to be audio archives of the calls (eg the one above discussing the essay)

Next Nature has published one of his interviews from Playboy magazine in the 1960s (the one mentioned above that I was reading today) - maybe it is true that some people just bought it for the articles?!??

28/05/2011
siphraya pier, bangrak
bangkok

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sunday 29/05/2011

siphraya reflections of light

the camera didn't really do this justice, but there were these amazing ghostly reflections and patterns of light moving on the ceiling next to the Si Phraya pier today whilst I was having lunch. mezmerizing