Mondays with McLuhan (1): Predicting Google

Mondays with McLuhan (1): Predicting Google

The following is from a May 8,1966 CBC television interview between Robert Fulford, a journalist, and Marshall McLuhan. Got this from “Understanding Me, lectures and interviews with McLuhan” (p.101).

In first exchange, McLuhan predicts the process we know as “to Google”—where you get specific information on a subject that interests you from the vast library of internet information.

In the second part of the exchange, McLuhan offers insights on how to protect yourself from information overload!

McLuhan: Instead of going out and buying a packaged book of which there have been five thousand copies printed, you will go to the telephone, describe your interests, your needs, your problems, and say you’re working on a history of Egyptian arithmetic. Yo know a bit of Sanskrit, you’re qualified in German, and you’re a good mathematician, and they say it will be  right over. And they at once xerox, with the help  of computers from the libraries of the world, all the latest material just for you personally, not as something to be put out on a bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service. This is where we’re heading under electronic information conditions. Products increasingly are becoming services.

Fulford: What kind of world would you rather live in? Is there a period in the past or a possible period in the future you’d rather be in?

McLuhan: No, I’d reather be in any period at all as long as people are going to leave it alone for a while.

Fulford: But they’re not going to, are they?

McLuhan: No, and the only alternative is to understand everything that’s going on, and then neutralize it as much as possible, turn off as many buttons as you can, and frustrate them as much as you can. I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me.