by prof. Derrick de Kerckhove (University of Toronto), presented on New Media Days, Katowice 2008, www.dninowychmediow.pl

1. McLuhan Revisited Derrick de Kerckhove McLuhan Program, Faculty of Information Studies University of Toronto Classical Pursuits

2. Alors, McLuhan, toujours mort? McLuhan in Winnipeg 1933 B.A. (U of M gold medal in arts and sciences 1934 M.A. (U of M)

3. The next medium, whatever it is- it may be the extension of conciousness- will include television as it's content, not as it's environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individuals encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind (1962).

4. The three ages of mankind

6. Technology and generations

7. “ Every kid knows that within three years, everything will have changed - including himself and the goal”

8. The radio kid

9. The TV kid (hippie)

10. 1981 The hyperkid Negotiating meaning with the screen Externalizing the mind to the screen and more…

11. Digital Natives and hyperkids Source : Mark Prensky / www.marcprensky.com > 10 000 hrs of video games > 250 000 emails and text messages > 10 000 hrs of cellular phone > 20 000 hrs of television > 500 000 commercials < 5 000 hrs reading books

12. These kids are fed up with jobs and goals, and are determined to forget their own roles and involvement in society. They want nothing to do with our fragmented and specialist consumer society. Living in the transitional identity vacuum between two great antithetical cultures, they are desperately trying to discover themselves and fashion a mode of existence attuned to their new values; thus the stress on developing an &quot;alternate life style.&quot; We can see the results of this retribalization process whenever we look at any of our youth--not just at hippies (1969).

13. In the same way that industry now makes the consumer the producer by means of motivation research, educators now recognize the education problems to be motivation rather than consumption of packaged information (1959)

14. This kind of environment that we have, an information environment, electrically programmed, turns the entire planet into a teaching machine, and it’s a man-made teaching machine. One of the results of the man-made environment becoming a teaching machine is that the audience becomes workforce (McLuhan, 1966).

15. Our children from early infancy are engaged in extraordinarily hard work, and that work is mainly just growing, growing up because to grow up in a modern electronic environment is a fantastically complex job. One of the peculiarities of an electronic environment is that people become so profoundly involved with each other that they lose the sense of private identity (1966). FaceBook

16. The more they know about you, the less you exist (Marshall McLuhan)

19. In the electric age, all space is HERE and all time is NOW (1973)

20. The Era of the tag

22. fields trees cloud sky climate lake water + locality, sensations, type of photography… The era of the tag

23. On the Internet every message is divided in small packets. A “packet” is a short sequence of data, with a protocol that contains an address and some administration to find its way via routers and switchers to its destination. Thus any message can finds its way as well as the order of its reconstitution thanks to a tag. The tag is the soul of the Internet

24. fields trees cloud sky climate lake water + locality, sensations, type of photography… So realistically, in the beginning was the tag, the unique address of the digital packet to make it available for the construction of images and the building of meaning from anywhere to anywhere for any given purpose. The tag is what allows to break down all the traditional categories and classifications and rebuild connections according to need, context and circumstances instead of forced environments of knowledge and design.

25. From the hierarchy of categories Clay Shirky

26. To links Clay Shirky

27. To interlinks Clay Shirky

28. To the disappearing of categories Clay Shirky

29. A humble barcode

30. Tim Berners-Lee Semantic Web

31. The semantic web and tags… (fonte: Shirky, 2005) … are projections of the division of labour between the two hemispheres of the brain

34. In any problem whatever, one in a million would see no problem. The real problem is how do you reach this person who has the answer (1974)

35. In the old industrial process you could only produce single items in large quantities, with the computer it will be possible to produce any number in any shape (1963)

36. After having extended our limbs and our senses in our electronic nervous system, it is but a short step to also export our consciousness (1963)

37. We will be able to record and to keep every instant of our life and play it back for study and entertainment (1973)

38. In the electric age, we wear all mankind as our skin

39. The personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology The new electronic independence recreates the world in the image of a global village. Information and images bump against each other every day in massive quantities, and the resonance of this interfacing is like the babble of a village or tavern gossip session.

40. Global Implosive All times are NOW Ubiquitous Volatile The overhauling of our traditional political system is only one manifestation of the retribalizing process wrought by the electric media, which is turning the planet into a global village.

41. Acceleration + Implosion + Globalization + = Loss of ground = Loss of identity = Loss of local talent = Loss of public space = Reaction: fundamentalism = Electronic Maelstrom, hijacking population

42. Implosion “ Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time” (1959)

44. Canada, the borderline case Physics of population distribution Centre-margin relationship A critical distance Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity

45. In Canada, many are cold, but few are frozen (1973)