Podcasts about McLuhan

Mi entrevistado en este episodio es Carlos A. Scolari, Catedrático del Departamento de Comunicación de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Barcelona. Ha sido Investigador Principal de diversos proyectos de investigación internacionales y estatales, desde el proyecto H2020 TRANSLITERACY (entre 2015 y 2018) hasta el proyecto LITERAC_IA, que comenzó en 2024 y dirige junto a María del Mar Guerrero. Sus últimos libros son Cultura Snack (2020), La guerra de las plataformas (2022) y Sobre la evolución de los medios (2024). Ahora está trabajando en un libro sobre los fósiles mediáticos.Notas del Episodio* Historia de ecologia de los medios* Historia de Carlos* Diferencias entre el anglosfero y el hispanosfero* La coevolucion entre tecnologia y humanos* La democratizacion de los medios* Evolucion de los medios* Alienacion y addiccion* Como usar los medios conscientementeTareaCarlos A. Scolari - Pagina Personal - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter - Escolar GoogleSobre la evolución de los mediosHipermediaciones (Libros)Transcrito en espanol (English Below)Chris: [00:00:00] Bienvenido al podcast el fin de turismo Carlos. Gracias por poder hablar conmigo hoy. Es un gran gusto tener tu presencia aquí conmigo hoy. Carlos: No gracias a ti, Chris, por la invitación. Es un enorme placer honor charlar contigo, gran viajero y bueno, yo nunca investigué directamente el tema del turismo.Pero bueno, entiendo que vamos a hablar de ecología de los medios y temas colaterales que nos pueden servir para entender mejor, darle un sentido a todo esto que está pasando en el mundo del turismo. Bueno, yo trabajo en Barcelona. No vivo exactamente en la ciudad, pero trabajo, en la universidad en Barcelona, en la zona céntrica.Y bueno, cada vez que voy a la ciudad cada día se incrementa la cantidad de turistas y se incrementa el debate sobre el turismo, en todas sus dimensiones. Así que es un tema que está la orden del día, no? Chris: Sí, pues me imagino que aunque si no te gusta pensar o si no quieres pensar en el turismo allá, es inevitable tener como una enseñanza [00:01:00] personal de esa industria.Carlos: Sí, hasta que se está convirtiendo casi en un criterio taxonómico, no? ...de clasificación o ciudades con mucho turista ciudades o lugares sin turistas que son los más buscados hasta que se llenan de turistas. Entonces estamos en un círculo vicioso prácticamente. Chris: Ya pues, que en algún memento se que se cambia, se rompe el ciclo, al menos para dar cuenta de lo que estamos haciendo con el comportamiento.Y, yo entiendo que eso también tiene mucho que ver con la ecología de los medios, la falta de capacidad de entender nuestros comportamientos, actitudes, pensamientos, sentimientos, etcétera. Entonces, antes de seguir por tu trabajo y obras, este me gustaría preguntarte de tu camino y de tu vida.Primero me pregunto si podrías definir para nuestros oyentes qué es la ecología de los medios y cómo te [00:02:00] interesó en este campo? Cómo llegaste a dedicar a tu vida a este estudio?Carlos: Sí. A ver un poco. Hay una, esta la historia oficial. Diríamos de la ecología de los medios o en inglés "media ecology," es una campo de investigación, digamos, eh, que nace en los años 60. Hay que tener en cuenta sobre todos los trabajos de Marshall McLuhan, investigador canadiense muy famoso a nivel mundial. Era quizá el filósofo investigador de los medios más famosos en los años 60 y 70.Y un colega de el, Neil Postman, que estaba en la universidad de New York en New York University un poco, digamos entre la gente que rodeaba estos dos referentes, no, en los años 60, de ahí se fue cocinando, diríamos, lo que después se llamó la media ecology. Se dice que el primero que habló de media ecology que aplicó esta metáfora a los medios, fue el mismo Marshall McLuhan en algunas, conversaciones privadas, [00:03:00] cartas que se enviaban finales dos años 50, a principios de los 60, se enviaban los investigadores investigadora de estos temas?Digamos la primera aparición pública del concepto de media ecology fue una conferencia en el año 1968 de Neil Postman. Era una intervención pública que la hablaba de un poco como los medios nos transforman y transforman los medios formar un entorno de nosotros crecemos, nos desarrollamos, no. Y nosotros no somos muy conscientes a veces de ese medio que nos rodea y nos modela.El utilizó por primera vez el concepto de media ecology en una conferencia pública. Y ya, si vamos a principio de los años 70, el mismo Postman crea en NYU, en New York University crea el primer programa en media ecology. O sea que ya en el 73, 74 y 75, empieza a salir lo que yo llamo la segunda generación, de gente [00:04:00] formada algunos en estos cursos de New York.Por ejemplo Christine Nystrom fue la primera tesis doctoral sobre mi ecology; gente como, Paul Levinson que en el año 1979 defiende una tesis doctoral dirigida por Postman sobre evolución de los medios, no? Y lo mismo pasaba en Toronto en los años 70. El Marshall McLuhan falleció en el diciembre del 80.Digamos que los años 70 fueron su última década de producción intelectual. Y hay una serie de colaboradores en ese memento, gente muy joven como Robert Logan, Derrick De Kerchove, que después un poco siguieron trabajando un poco todo esta línea, este enfoque. Y ahí hablamos del frente canadiense, eh?Toda esta segunda generación fue desarrollando, fue ampliando aplicando. No nos olvidemos de Eric McLuhan, el hijo de Marshall, que también fue parte de toda esta movida. [00:05:00] Y si no recuerdo mal en el año 2000, se crea la asociación la Media Ecology Association, que es la Asociación de Ecología de los Medios, que es una organización académica, científica, que nuclea a la gente que se ocupa de media ecology. Si pensamos a nivel más científico epistemológico, podemos pensar esta metáfora de la ecología de los medios desde dos o tres perspectivas. Por un lado, esta idea de que los medios crean ambientes. Esta es una idea muy fuerte de Marsha McLuhan, de Postman y de todo este grupo, no? Los medios - "medio" entendido en sentido muy amplio, no, cualquier tecnología podría ser un medio para ellos.Para Marsha McLuhan, la rueda es un medio. Un un telescopio es un medio. Una radio es un medio y la televisión es un medio, no? O sea, cualquier tecnología puede considerarse un medio. Digamos que estos medios, estas tecnologías, generan un [00:06:00] ambiente que a nosotros nos transforma. Transforma nuestra forma, a veces de pensar nuestra forma de percibir el mundo, nuestra concepción del tiempo del espacio.Y nosotros no somos conscientes de ese cambio. Pensemos que, no sé, antes de 1800, si alguien tenía que hacer un viaje de mil kilómetros (y acá nos acercamos al turismo) kilómetros era un viaje que había que programarlo muchos meses antes. Con la llegada del tren, ya estamos en 1800, esos kilómetros se acortaron. Digamos no? Ahí vemos como si a nosotros hoy nos dicen 1000 kilómetros.Bueno, si, tomamos un avión. Es una hora, una hora y cuarto de viaje. Hoy 1000 kilómetro es mucho menos que hace 200 años y incluso a nivel temporal, se a checo el tiempo. No? Todo eso es consecuencia, digamos este cambio, nuestra percepción es consecuencia de una serie de medios y tecnologías.El ferrocarril. Obviamente, hoy tenemos los aviones. Las mismas redes digitales que, un poco nos han llevado esta idea de "tiempo [00:07:00] real," esta ansiedad de querer todo rápido, no? También esa es consecuencia de estos cambios ambientales generados por los medios y las tecnologías, eh? Esto es un idea muy fuerte, cuando McLuhan y Postman hablaban de esto en los años 60, eran fuertes intuiciones que ellos tenían a partir de una observación muy inteligente de la realidad. Hoy, las ciencias cognitivas, mejor las neurociencia han confirmado estas hipótesis. O sea, hoy existen una serie de eh metodología para estudiar el cerebro y ya se ve como las tecnologías.Los medios afectan incluso la estructura física del cerebro. No? Otro tema que esto es histórico, que los medios afectan nuestra memoria. Esto viene de Platón de hace 2500 años, que él decía que la escritura iba a matar la memoria de los hombres. Bueno, podemos pensar nosotros mismos, no, eh?O por lo menos esta generación, que [00:08:00] vivimos el mundo antes y después de las aplicaciones móviles. Yo hace 30 años, 25 años, tenía mi memoria 30-40 números telefónicos. Hoy no tengo ninguno. Y en esa pensemos también el GPS, no? En una época, los taxistas de Londres, que es una ciudad latica se conocían a memoria la ciudad. Y hoy eso, ya no hace falta porque tienen GPS.Y cuando han ido a estudiar el cerebro de los taxistas de Londres, han visto que ciertas áreas del cerebro se han reducido, digamos, así, que son las áreas que gestionaban la parte espacial. Esto ya McLuhan, lo hablaba en los años 60. Decía como que los cambios narcotizan ciertas áreas de la mente decía él.Pero bueno, vemos que mucha investigación empírica, bien de vanguardia científica de neurociencia está confirmando todas estos pensamientos, todas estas cosas que se decían a los años 60 en adelante, por la media ecology. Otra posibilidad es entender [00:09:00] esto como un ecosistema de medios, Marshall McLuhan siempre decía no le podemos dar significado,no podemos entender un medio aislado de los otros medios. Como que los medios adquieren sentido sólo en relación con otros medios. También Neil Postman y mucha otra gente de la escuela de la media ecology, defiende esta posición, de que, bueno, los medios no podemos entender la historia del cine si no la vinculamos a los videojuegos, si no lo vinculamos a la aparición de la televisión.Y así con todos los medios, no? Eh? Hay trabajos muy interesantes. Por ejemplo, de como en el siglo 19, diferentes medios, podríamos decir, que coevolucionaron entre sí. La prensa, el telégrafo. El tren, que transportaba los diarios también, aparecen las agencias de noticias. O sea, vemos cómo es muy difícil entender el desarrollo de la prensa en el siglo XIX y no lo vinculamos al teléfono, si no lo vinculamos a la fotografía, si no lo vinculamos a la radio fotografía, [00:10:00] también más adelante.O sea, esta idea es muy fuerte. No también es otro de los principios para mí fundamentales de esta visión, que sería que los medios no están solos, forman parte de un ecosistema y si nosotros queremos entender lo que está pasando y cómo funciona todo esto, no podemos, eh, analizar los medios aislados del resto.Hay una tercera interpretación. Ya no sé si es muy metafórica. No? Sobre todo, gente en Italia como el investigador Fausto Colombo de Milán o Michele Cometa, es un investigador de Sicilia, Michele Cometa que él habla de l giro, el giro ecomedial. Estos investigadores están moviéndose en toda una concepción según la cual, estamos en único ecosistema mediático que está contaminado.Está contaminado de "fake news" está contaminado de noticias falsas, está contaminado de discursos de odio, etcétera, etc. Entonces ellos, digamos, retoman esta metáfora ecológica para decir [00:11:00] precisamente tenemos que limpiar este ecosistema así como el ecosistema natural está contaminado, necesita una intervención de limpieza, digamos así de purificación, eh? También el ecosistema mediático corre el mismo peligro, no? Y esta gente también llama la atención, y yo estoy muy cerca de esta línea de trabajo sobre la dimensión material de la comunicación. Y esto también tiene que ver con el turismo, queriendo, no? El impacto ambiental que tiene la comunicación hoy.Entrenar una inteligencia artificial implica un consumo eléctrico brutal; mantener funcionando las redes sociales, eh, tiktok, youtube, lo que sea, implica millones de servidores funcionando que chupan energía eléctrica y hay que enfriarlos además, consumiendo aún más energía eléctrica. Y eso tiene un impacto climático no indiferente.Así que, bueno, digamos, vemos que está metáfora de lo ecológico, aplicado los medios da para dos o tres interpretaciones. Chris: Mmm. [00:12:00] Wow. Siento que cuando yo empecé tomando ese curso de de Andrew McLuhan, el nieto de Marshall, como te mencioné, cambio mi perspectiva totalmente - en el mundo, en la manera como entiendo y como no entiendo también las nuestras tecnologías, mis movimientos, etcétera, pero ya, por una persona que tiene décadas de estudiando eso, me gustaría saber de de como empezaste. O sea, Andrew, por ejemplo tiene la excusa de su linaje, no de su papá y su abuelo.Pero entonces, como un argentino joven empezó aprendiendo de ecología de medios. Carlos: Bueno, yo te comento. Yo estudié comunicación en argentina en Rosario. Terminé la facultad. El último examen el 24 de junio del 86, que fue el día que nacía el Lionel Messi en Rosario, en Argentina el mismo día. Y [00:13:00] yo trabajaba, colaboraba en una asignatura en una materia que era teorías de la comunicación.E incluso llegué a enseñar hasta el año 90, fueron tres años, porque ya después me fui vivir Italia. En esa época, nosotros leíamos a Marshall McLuhan, pero era una lectura muy sesgada ideológicamente. En América latina, tú lo habrás visto en México. Hay toda una historia, una tradición de críticas de los medios, sobre todo, a todo lo que viene de estados unidos y Canadá está muy cerca de Estados Unidos. Entonces, digamos que en los años 70 y 80 y y hasta hoy te diría muchas veces a Marshall McLuhan se lo criticó mucho porque no criticaba los medios. O sea el te tenía una visión. Él decía, Neil Postman, si tenía una visión muy crítica. Pero en ese caso, este era una de las grandes diferencias entre Postman y McLuhan, que Marshall McLuhan, al menos en [00:14:00] público, él no criticaba los medios. Decía bueno, yo soy un investigador, yo envío sondas. Estoy explorando lo que pasa. Y él nunca se sumó... Y yo creo que eso fue muy inteligente por parte de él... nunca se sumó a este coro mundial de crítica a los medios de comunicación. En esa época, la televisión para mucha gente era un monstruo.Los niños no tenían que ver televisión. Un poco lo que pasa hoy con los móviles y lo que pasa hoy con tiktok. En esa época en la televisión, el monstruo. Entonces, había mucha investigación en Estados Unidos, que ya partía de la base que la televisión y los medios son malos para la gente. Vemos que es una historia que se repite. Yo creo que en ese sentido, Marshall McLuhan, de manera muy inteligente, no se sumó ese coro crítico y él se dedico realmente a pensar los medios desde una perspectiva mucho más libre, no anclada por esta visión yo creo demasiado ideologizada, que en América Latina es muy fuerte. Es muy fuerte. Esto no implica [00:15:00] bajar la guardia, no ser crítico. Al contrario.Pero yo creo que el el verdadero pensamiento crítico parte de no decir tanto ideológica, decimos "esto ya es malo. Vamos a ver esto." Habrá cosas buenas. Habrá cosas mala. Habrá cosa, lo que es innegable, que los medios mas ya que digamos son buenos son va, nos transforman. Y yo creo que eso fue lo importante de la idea McLuhaniana. Entonces mi primer acercamiento a McLuhan fue una perspectiva de los autores críticos que, bueno, sí, viene de Estados Unidos, no critica los medios. Vamos a criticarlo a nosotros a él, no? Y ese fue mi primer acercamiento a Marshall McLuhan. Yo me fui a Italia en la decada de 90. Estuve casi ocho años fuera de la universidad, trabajando en medios digitales, desarrollo de páginas, webs, productos multimédia y pretexto. Y a finales de los 90, dije quiero volver a la universidad. Quiero ser un doctorado. Y dije, "quiero hacer un doctorado. Bueno. Estando en Italia, el doctorado iba a ser de semiótica." Entonces hizo un [00:16:00] doctorado. Mi tesis fue sobre semiótica de las interfaces.Ahi tuve una visión de las interfaces digitales que consideran que, por ejemplo, los instrumentos como el mouse o joystick son extensiones de nuestro cuerpo, no? El mouse prolonga la mano y la mete dentro de la pantalla, no? O el joystick o cualquier otro elemento de la interfaz digital? Claro. Si hablamos de que el mouse es una extensión de la mano, eso es una idea McLuhaniana.Los medios como extensiones del ser humano de sujeto. Entonces, claro ahi yo releo McLuhan en italiano a finales de los años 90, y me reconcilio con McLuhan porque encuentro muchas cosas interesantes para entender precisamente la interacción con las máquinas digitales. En el a 2002, me mudo con mi familia a España. Me reintegro la vida universitaria. [00:17:00] Y ahí me pongo a estudiar la relación entre los viejos y los nuevos medios. Entonces recupero la idea de ecosistema. Recupero toda la nueva, la idea de ecología de mi ecology. Y me pongo a investigar y releer a McLuhan por tercera vez. Y a leerlo en profundidad a él y a toda la escuela de mi ecology para poder entender las dinámicas del actual ecosistema mediático y entender la emergencia de lo nuevo y cómo lo viejo lucha por adaptarse. En el 2009, estuve tres meses trabajando con Bob Logan en the University of Toronto. El año pasado, estuve en el congreso ahí y tuvimos dos pre conferencias con gente con Paolo Granata y todo el grupo de Toronto.O sea que, tengo una relación muy fuerte con todo lo que se producía y se produce en Toronto. Y bueno, yo creo que, a mí hoy, la media ecology, me sirve muchísimo junto a otras disciplina como la semiótica para poder entender el ecosistema [00:18:00] mediático actual y el gran tema de investigación mío hoy, que es la evolución del la ecosistema mediático.Mm, digamos que dentro de la media ecology, empezando de esa tesis doctoral del 79 de Paul Levinson, hay toda una serie de contribuciones, que un poco son los que han ido derivando en mi último libro que salió el año pasado en inglés en Routledge, que se llama The Evolution of Media y acaba de salir en castellano.Qué se llama Sobre La Evolución De los Medios. En la teoría evolutiva de los medios, hay mucha ecología de los medios metidos. Chris: Claro, claro. Pues felicidad es Carlos. Y vamos a volver en un ratito de ese tema de la evolución de medios, porque yo creo que es muy importante y obviamente es muy importante a ti. Ha sido como algo muy importante en tu trabajo. Pero antes de de salir de esa esquina de pensamiento, hubo una pregunta que me mandó Andrew McLuhan para ti, que ya ella contestaste un poco, pero este tiene que ver entre las diferencias en los [00:19:00] mundos de ecología de medios anglofonos y hispánicos. Y ya mencionaste un poco de eso, pero desde los tiempos en los 80 y noventas, entonces me gustaría saber si esas diferencias siguen entre los mundos intelectuales, en el mundo anglofono o hispánico.Y pues, para extender su pregunta un poco, qué piensas sería como un punto o tema o aspecto más importante de lo que uno de esos mundos tiene que aprender el otro en el significa de lo que falta, quizás. Carlos: Si nos focalizamos en el trabajo de Marshall McLuhan, no es que se lo criticó sólo de América Latina.En Europa no caía simpático Marshall McLuhan en los 60, 70. Justamente por lo mismo, porque no criticaba el sistema capitalista de medios. La tradición europea, la tradición de la Escuela de Frankfurt, la escuela de una visión anti [00:20:00] capitalista que denuncia la ideología dominante en los medio de comunicación.Eso es lo que entra en América Latina y ahí rebota con mucha fuerza. Quizá la figura principal que habla desde América Latina, que habló mucho tiempo de América latina es Armand Mattelart. Matterlart es un teórico en la comunicación, investigador de Bélgica. Y él lo encontramos ya a mediados de los años 60 finales de los 60 en Chile en un memento muy particular de la historia de Chile donde había mucha politización y mucha investigación crítica, obviamente con el con con con con el capitalismo y con el imperialismo estadounidense. Quizá la la obra clásica de ese memento es el famoso libro de Mattelart y Dorfman, eh, eh? Para Leer El Pato Donald, que donde ellos desmontan toda la estructura ideológica capitalista, imperialista, que había en los cics en las historietas del pato Donald.Ellos dicen esto se publicó a [00:21:00] principio los 70. Es quizá el libro más vendido de la comic latinoamericana hasta el día de hoy, eh? Ellos dicen hay ideología en la literatura infantil. Con el pato Donald, le están llenando la cabeza a nuestros niños de toda una visión del mundo muy particular.Si uno le el pato Donald de esa época, por lo menos, la mayor parte de las historia del pato Donald, que era, había que a buscar un tesoro y adónde. Eran lugares africana, peruviana, incaica o sea, eran países del tercer mundo. Y ahí el pato Donald, con sus sobrinos, eran lo suficientemente inteligentes para volverse con el oro a Patolandia.Claro. Ideológicamente. Eso no se sostiene. Entonces, la investigación hegemónica en esa época en Europa, en Francia, la semiología pero sobre todo, en América latina, era ésa. Hay que estudiar el mensaje. Hay que estudiar el contenido, porque ahí está la ideología [00:22:00] dominante del capitalismo y del imperialismo.En ese contexto, entra McLuhan. Se traduce McLuhan y que dice McLuhan: el medio es el mensaje. No importa lo que uno lee, lo que nos transforma es ver televisión, leer comics, escuchar la radio. Claro, iba contramano del mainstream de la investigación en comunicación. O sea, digamos que en América latina, la gente que sigue en esa línea que todavía existe y es fuerte, no es una visión muy crítica de todo esto, todavía hoy, a Marshal McLuhan le cae mal, pero lo mismo pasa en Europa y otros países donde la gente que busca una lectura crítica anti-capitalista y anti-sistémica de la comunicación, no la va a encontrar nunca en Marshall McLuhan, por más que sea de América latina, de de de Europa o de Asia. Entonces yo no radicaría todo esto en un ámbito anglosajón y el latinoamericano. Después, bueno, la hora de McLuhan es bastante [00:23:00] polisemica. Admite como cualquier autor así, que tiene un estilo incluso de escritura tan creativo en forma de mosaico.No era un escritor Cartesiano ordenadito y formal. No, no. McLuhan era una explosión de ideas muy bien diseñada a propósito, pero era una explosión de ideas. Por eso siempre refrescan tener a McLuhan. Entonces normal que surjan interpretaciones diferentes, no? En estados unidos en Canadá, en Inglaterra, en Europa continental o en Latinoamérica o en Japón, obviamente, no? Siendo un autor que tiene estas características. Por eso yo no en no anclaría esto en cuestiones territoriales. Cuando uno busca un enfoque que no tenga esta carga ideológica para poder entender los medios, que no se limite sólo a denunciar el contenido.McLuhan y la escuela de la ecología de los medios es fundamental y es un aporte muy, muy importante en ese sentido, no? Entonces, bueno, yo creo que McLuhan tuvo [00:24:00] detractores en Europa, tuvo detractores en América latina y cada tanto aparece alguno, pero yo creo que esto se ido suavizando. Yo quiero que, como que cada vez más se lo reivindica McLuhan.La gente que estudia, por ejemplo, en Europa y en América latina, que quizá en su época criticaron a McLuhan, todas las teorías de la mediatización, por ejemplo, terminan coincidiendo en buena parte de los planteos de la media ecology. Hoy que se habla mucho de la materialidad de la comunicación, los nuevos materialismos, yo incluyo a Marshall McLuhan en uno de los pioneros des esta visión también de los nuevos materialismos. Al descentrar el análisis del contenido, al medio, a la cosa material, podemos considerar a macl también junto a Bruno Latour y otra gente como pionero, un poco de esta visión de no quedarse atrapados en el giro lingüístico, no, en el contenido, en el giro semiótico e incorporar también la dimensión material de la comunicación y el medio en sí.[00:25:00] Chris: Muy bien. Muy bien, ya. Wow, es tanto, pero lo aprecio mucho. Gracias, Carlos. Y me gustaría seguir preguntándote un poco ahora de tu propio trabajo. Tienes un capítulo en tu libro. Las Leyes de la Interfaz titulado "Las Interfaces Co-evolucionan Con Sus Usuarios" donde escribes "estas leyes de la interfaz no desprecian a los artefactos, sus inventores ó las fuerzas sociales. Solo se limitan á insertarlos á una red socio técnica de relaciones, intercambios y transformaciones para poder analizarlos desde una perspectiva eco-evolutiva."Ahora, hay un montón ahí en este paragrafito. Pero entonces, me gustaría preguntarte, cómo vea los humanos [00:26:00] co-evolucionando con sus tecnologías? Por ejemplo, nuestra forma de performatividad en la pantalla se convierte en un hábito más allá de la pantalla.Carlos: Ya desde antes del homo sapiens, los homínidos más avanzados, digamos en su momento, creaban instrumentos de piedra. Hemos descubierto todos los neandertales tenían una cultura muy sofisticada, incluso prácticas casi y religiosas, más allá de la cuestión material de la construcción de artefactos. O sea que nuestra especie es impensable sin la tecnología, ya sea un hacha de piedra o ya sea tiktok o un smartphone. Entonces, esto tenemos que tenerlo en cuenta cuando analizamos cualquier tipo de de interacción cotidiana, estamos rodeados de tecnología y acá, obviamente, la idea McLuhaniana es fundamental. Nosotros creamos estos medios. Nosotros creamos estas tecnologías.Estas tecnologías también nos reformatean. [00:27:00] McLuhan, no me suena que haya usado el concepto de coevolución, pero está ahí. Está hablando de eso. Ahora bien. Hay una coevolución si se quiere a larguísimo plazo, que, por ejemplo, sabemos que el desarrollo de instrumentos de piedra, el desarrollo del fuego, hizo que el homo sapiens no necesitara una mandíbula tan grande para poder masticar los alimentos. Y eso produce todo un cambio, que achicó la mandíbula le dejó más espacio en el cerebro, etcétera, etcétera. Eso es una coevolución en término genético, digamos a larguísimo plazo, okey. También la posición eréctil, etcétera, etcétera. Pero, digamos que ya ahí había tecnologías humanas coevolucionando con estos cambios genéticos muy, muy lentos.Pero ahora tenemos también podemos decir esta co evolución ya a nivel de la estructura neuronal, entonces lo ha verificado la neurociencia, como dije antes. Hay cambio físico en la estructura del cerebro a lo largo de la vida de una persona debido a la interacción con ciertas tecnologías. Y por qué pasa eso?Porque [00:28:00] la producción, creación de nuevos medios, nuevas tecnologías se ido acelerando cada vez más. Ahi podemos hacer una curva exponencial hacia arriba, para algunos esto empezó hace 10,000 años. Para algunos esto se aceleró con la revolución industrial. Algunos hablan de la época el descubrimiento de América.Bueno, para alguno esto es un fenómeno de siglo xx. El hecho es que en términos casi geológicos, esto que hablamos del antropoceno es real y está vinculado al impacto del ser humano sobre nuestro ambiente y lo tecnológico es parte de ese proceso exponencial de co evolución. Nosotros hoy sentimos un agobio frente a esta aceleración de la tecnología y nuestra necesidad. Quizá de adaptarnos y coevolucionar con ella. Como esto de que todo va muy rápido. Cada semana hay un problema nuevo, una aplicación nueva. Ahora tenemos la inteligencia artificial, etc, etcétera. Pero esta sensación [00:29:00] no es nueva. Es una sensación de la modernidad. Si uno lee cosas escritas en 1,800 cuando llega el tren también la gente se quejaba que el mundo iba muy rápido. Dónde iremos a parar con este caballo de hierro que larga humo no? O sea que esta sensación de velocidad de cambio rápido ya generaciones anteriores la vivían. Pero evidentemente, el cambio hoy es mucho más rápido y denso que hace dos siglos. Y eso es real también. Así que, bueno, nuestra fe se va coevolucionando y nos vamos adaptando como podemos, yo esta pregunta se la hice hace 10 años a Kevin Kelly, el primer director de la revista Wire que lo trajimos a Barcelona y el que siempre es muy optimista. Kevin Kelly es determinista tecnológico y optimista al mismo tiempo. Él decía que "que bueno que el homo sapiens lo va llevando bastante bien. Esto de co evolucionar con la tecnología." Otra gente tiene una [00:30:00] visión radicalmente opuesta, que esto es el fin del mundo, que el homo sapiens estamos condenados a desaparecer por esta co evolución acelerada, que las nuevas generaciones son cada vez más estúpidas.Yo no creo eso. Creo, como McLuhan, que los medios nos reforman, nos cambian algunas cosas quizás para vivir otras quizá no tanto, pero no, no tengo una visión apocalíptica de esto para nada. Chris: Bien, bien. Entonces cuando mencionaste lo de la televisión, yo me acuerdo mucho de de mi niñez y no sé por qué. Quizás fue algo normal en ese tiempo para ver a tele como un monstruo, como dijiste o quizás porque mis mis papás eran migrantes pero fue mucho de su idea de esa tecnología y siempre me dijo como no, no, no quédate ahí tan cerca y eso.Entonces, aunque lo aceptaron, ellos comprendieron que el poder [00:31:00] de la tele que tenía sobre las personas. Entonces ahora todos, parece a mí, que todos tienen su propio canal, no su propio programación, o el derecho o privilegio de tener su propio canal o múltiples canales.Entonces, es una gran pregunta, pero cuáles crees que son las principales consecuencias de darle a cada uno su propio programa en el sentido de como es el efecto de hacer eso, de democratizar quizás la tecnología en ese sentido? Carlos: Cuando dices su propio canal, te refieres a la posibilidad de emitir o construir tu propia dieta mediática.Chris: Bueno primero, pero puede ser ambos, claro, no? O sea, mi capacidad de tener un perfil o cuenta mía personal. Y luego como el fin del turismo, no? Y luego otro. Carlos: Sí, a ver. Yo creo que, bueno, esto fue el gran cambio radical que empezó a darse a partir la década del 2000 o [00:32:00] sea, hace 25 años. Porque la web al principio sí era una red mundial en los años 90. Pero claro la posibilidad de compartir un contenido y que todo el mundo lo pudiera ver, estaba muy limitado a crear una página web, etcétera. Cuando aparecen las redes sociales o las Web 2.0 como se la llamaba en esa época y eso se suma los dispositivos móviles, ahí se empieza a generar esta cultura tan difundida de la creación de contenido. Hasta digamos que hasta ese momento quien generaba contenido era más o menos un profesional en la radio y en la televisión, pero incluso en la web o en la prensa o el cine. Y a partir de ahí se empieza, digamos, a abrir el juego. En su momento, esto fue muy bien saludado fue qué bueno! Esto va nos va a llevar a una sociedad más democrática. 25 años después, claro, estamos viendo el lado oscuro solamente. Yo creo que el error hace 25 años era pensar solo las posibilidades [00:33:00] buenas, optimistas, de esto. Y hoy me parece que estamos enredados en discursos solamente apocalípticos no?No vemos las cosas buenas, vemos solo las cosas malas. Yo creo que hay de las dos cosas hoy. Claro, hoy cualquier persona puede tener un canal, sí, pero no todo el mundo crea un canal. Los niveles de participación son muy extraños, o sea, la mayor parte de la población de los usuarios y usuarias entre en las redes. Mira. Mete un me gusta. Quizá un comentario. Cada tanto comparte una foto. Digamos que los "heavy users" o "heavy producers" de contenido son siempre una minoría, ya sea profesionales, ya sea influencers, streamers, no? Es siempre, yo no sé si acá estamos en un 20-80 o un 10-90 son estas curvas que siempre fue así? No? Si uno ve la Wikipedia, habrá un 5-10 por ciento de gente que genera contenido mucho menos incluso. Y un 90 por ciento que se [00:34:00] beneficia del trabajo de una minoría. Esto invierte la lógica capitalista? La mayoría vive de la minoría y esto pasaba antes también en otros, en otros sistemas. O sea que en ese sentido, es sólo una minoría de gente la que genera contenido de impacto, llamémoslo así, de alcance mayor.Pero bueno, yo creo que el hecho de que cualquier persona pueda dar ese salto para mí, está bien. Genera otra serie de problemas, no? Porque mientras que genera contenido, es un profesional o un periodista, digamos, todavía queda algo de normas éticas y que deben cumplir no? Yo veo que en el mundo de los streamers, el mundo de los Tik tokers etcétera, etcétera, lo primero que ellos dicen es, nosotros no somos periodistas. Y de esa forma, se inhiben de cualquier, control ético o de respeto a normas éticas profesionales. Por otro lado, las plataformas [00:35:00] Meta, Google, todas. Lo primero que te dicen es nosotros no somos medio de comunicación. Los contenidos los pone la gente.Nosotros no tenemos nada que ver con eso. Claro, ellos también ahí se alejan de toda la reglamentación. Por eso hubo que hacer. Europa y Estados Unidos tuvo que sacar leyes especiales porque ellos decían no, no, las leyes del periodismo a nosotros no nos alcanzan. Nosotros no somos editores de contenidos.Y es una mentira porque las plataformas sí editan contenido a través los algoritmos, porque nos están los algoritmos, nos están diciendo que podemos ver y que no está en primera página. No están filtrando información, o sea que están haciendo edición. Entonces, como que se generan estas equivocaciones.Y eso es uno de los elementos que lleva esta contaminación que mencioné antes en el en los ámbitos de la comunicación. Pero yo, si tuviera que elegir un ecosistema con pocos enunciadores pocos medios controlados por profesionales y este ecosistema [00:36:00] caótico en parte contaminado con muchos actores y muchas voces, yo prefiero el caos de hoy a la pobreza del sistema anterior.Prefiero lidiar, pelearme con y estar buscar de resolver el problema de tener mucha información, al problema de la censura y tener sólo dos, tres puntos donde se genera información. Yo he vivido en Argentina con dictadura militar con control férreo de medios, coroneles de interventores en la radio y la televisión que controlaban todo lo que se decía.Y yo prefiero el caos de hoy, aún con fake news y todo lo que quieras. Prefiero el caos de hoy a esa situación. Chris: Sí, sí, sí, sí. Es muy fuerte de pensar en eso para la gente que no han vivido en algo así, no? Osea algunos familiares extendidos han vivido en mundos comunistas, en el pasado en el este de Europa y no se hablan [00:37:00] exactamente así.Pero, se se hablan, no? Y se se dicen que lo que lo que no tenía ni lo que no tiene por control y por fuerza. Entonces, en ese como mismo sentido de lo que falta de la memoria vivida, me gustaría preguntarte sobre tu nuevo libro. Y sobre la evolución de medios. Entonces me gustaría preguntarte igual por nuestros oyentes que quizás no han estudiado mucho de la ecología de los medios Para ti qué es la evolución de los medios y por qué es importante para nuestro cambiante y comprensión del mundo. O sea, igual al lado y no solo pegado a la ecología de medios, pero la evolución de los medios,Carlos: Sí, te cuento ahí hay una disciplina, ya tradicional que es la historia y también está la historia de la comunicación y historia de los medios. [00:38:00] Hay libros muy interesantes que se titulan Historia de la Comunicación de Gutenberg a Internet o Historia de la Comunicación del Papiro a Tiktok. Entonces, qué pasa? Esos libros te dicen bueno, estaba el papiro, después vino el pergamino, el manuscrito, después en 1450 vino Gutenberg, llegó el libro. Pero eso el libro no te cuentan que pasó con el manuscrito, ni que pasó con el papiro. Y te dicen que llega la radio en 1920 y en 1950 llega la televisión y no te dicen que pasó con la radio, que pasó con el cine.Son historias lineales donde un medio parece que va sustituyendo al otro. Y después tenemos muchos libros muy buenos también. Historia de la radio, historia de la televisión, historia de internet, historia del periodismo. Como dije antes, retomando una idea, de McLuhan no podemos entender los medios aislados.Yo no puedo entender la evolución de la radio si no la vinculo a la prensa, a [00:39:00] la televisión y otro al podcast. Okey, entonces digo, necesitamos un campo de investigación, llamémoslo una disciplina en construcción, que es una teoría y también es metodología para poder entender el cambio mediático, todas estas transformaciones del ecosistema de medios a largo plazo y que no sea una sucesión de medios, sino, ver cómo esa red de medios fue evolucionando. Y eso yo lo llamo una teoría evolutiva o una "media evolution" Y es lo que estoy trabajando ahora. Claro, esta teoría, este enfoque, este campo de investigación toma muchas cosas de la ecología de los medios, empezando por Marshall McLuhan pero también gente de la tradición previa a la media ecology como Harold Innis, el gran historiador, economista de la comunicación y de la sociedad, que fue quizás el intelectual más famoso en Canadá en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Harold Innis que influenció mucho a Marshall McLuhan [00:40:00] Marshall McLuhann en la primera página de Gutenberg Galaxy, dice este libro no es otra cosa que una nota al pie de página de la obra de Harold Innis Entonces, Harold Innis que hizo una historia de los tiempos antiguos poniendo los medios al centro de esa historia. Para mí es fundamental. Incluso te diría a veces más que McLuhan, como referencia, a la hora de hacer una teoría evolutiva del cambio mediático. Y después, obviamente tomo muchas cosas de la historia de los medios.Tomo muchas cosas de la arqueología de los medios (media archeology). Tomo cosas también de la gente que investigó la historia de la tecnología, la construcción social de la tecnología. O sea, la media evolution es un campo intertextual, como cualquier disciplina que toma cosas de todos estos campos para poder construir una teoría, un enfoque, una mirada que sea más a largo plazo, que no sea una sucesión de medios, sino que vea la evolución de todo el ecosistema mediático, prestando mucha atención a las relaciones [00:41:00] entre medios, y con esta visión más compleja sistémica de cómo cambian las cosas.Yo creo que el cambio mediático es muy rápido y necesitamos una teoría para poder darle un sentido a todo este gran cambio, porque si nos quedamos analizando cosas muy micro, muy chiquititas, no vemos los grandes cambios. No nos podemos posicionar... esto un poco como el fútbol. Los mejores jugadores son los que tienen el partido en la cabeza y saben dónde está todo. No están mirando la pelota, pero saben dónde están los otros jugadores? Bueno, yo creo que la media evolution sirve para eso. Más allá de que hoy estemos todos hablando de la IA generativa. No? Tener esta visión de de conjunto de todo el ecosistema mediático y tecnológico, yo creo que es muy útil.Chris: Mm. Wow Increíble, increíble. Sí. Sí. Pienso mucho en como las nuevas generaciones o las generaciones más jóvenes en el día de hoy. O sea, [00:42:00] al menos más joven que yo, que la mayoría, como que tiene 20 años hoy, no tienen una memoria vívida de cómo fuera el mundo, sin redes sociales o sin el internet. Y así como me voy pensando en mi vida y como yo, no tengo una memoria de vida como fuera el mundo sin pantallas de cualquier tipo, o sea de tele de compus. No solo de internet o redes. Carlos: Sí, no, te decia que mi padre vivió, mi padre tiene 90 años y él se recuerda en el año 58, 59, su casa fue la primera en un barrio de Rosario que tuvo televisión y transmitían a partir de la tarde seis, siete de la tarde. Entonces venían todos los vecinos y vecinas a ver televisión a la casa de mi abuela. Entonces cada uno, cada generación tiene sus historias. No? Chris: Ajá. Ajá. Sí. Pues sí. Y también, como dijiste, para [00:43:00] entender los medios como sujetos o objetos individuales, o sea en su propio mundo, no? Este recuerdo un poco de la metáfora de Robin Wall Kimmerer que escribió un libro que se llama Braiding Sweetgrass o Trenzando Pasto Dulce supongo, en español. Y mencionó que para entender el entendimiento indígena, digamos entre comillas de tiempo, no necesitamos pensar en una línea, una flecha desde el pasado hacia el futuro. Pero, un lago, mientras el pasado, presente, y futuro existen, a la vez, en ese lago.Y también pienso como en el lugar, el pasado, presente, y el futuro, como todos esos medios existiendo a la vez, como en un lago y obviamente en una ecología de su evolución de sus cambios. Carlos: Es, muy interesante eso. Después te voy a pedir la referencia del libro porque, claro, [00:44:00] McLuhan siempre decía que el contenido de un medio es otro medio. Entonces, puede pasar que un medio del pasado deja su huella o influye en un medio del futuro. Y entonces ahí se rompe la línea temporal. Y esos son los fenómenos que a mí me interesa estudiar. Chris: Mmm, mmm, pues Carlos para terminar, tengo dos últimas preguntas para ti. Esta vez un poco alineado con el turismo, y aunque no estas enfocado tanto en en el estudio de turismo. Por mis estudios y investigaciones y por este podcast, he amplificado esa definición de turismo para ver cómo existiría más allá de una industria. Y para mí, el turismo incluye también el deseo de ver una persona, un lugar o una cultura como destino, como algo útil, temporal en su valor de uso y por tanto, desechable. Entonces, me gustaría [00:45:00] preguntarte, si para ti parece que nuestros medios populares, aunque esto es un tiempo, digamos con más libertad de otros lugares o tiempos en el pasado, más autoritarianos o totalitarianos? Si te ves la posibilidad o la evidencia de que nuestros medios digamos como mainstream más usados, están creando o promoviendo un , un sentido de alienación en la gente por efectivamente quedarles a distancia al otro o la otra.Carlos: Yo ya te dije no, no tengo una visión apocalíptica de los medios. Nunca, la tuve. Esto no quita de que los medios y como dijimos antes, tienen problemas. Generan también contaminación. Llamémoslo así si seguimos con la metáfora, ? El tema de alienación viene desde hace [00:46:00] muchísimos años. Ya cuando estudiaba en la universidad, nunca sintonicé con las teorías de la alienación.El concepto de alienación viene del siglo XIX. Toda una teoría de la conciencia, el sujeto, el proletario, llamémoslo, así que tenía que tomar conciencia de clase. Bueno, las raíces de esa visión del concepto alienación vienen de ahí. Yo, a mí nunca me convenció, justamente. Y acá si interesante.El aporte de América Latina en teorías de la comunicación siempre fue diferente. Fue reivindicar la resignificación, la resemantización el rol activo del receptor, cuando muchas veces las teorías que venían de Europa o Estados Unidos tenían esta visión del receptor de la comunicación como un ser pasivo. En ese sentido, la media ecology nunca entró en ese discurso porque se manejaba con otros parámetros, pero digamos que lo que era el mainstream de la investigación de estados unidos, pero también de Europa, siempre coincidían en esto en considerar el receptor pasivo, alienado, [00:47:00] estupidizado por los medios. Y yo realmente nunca, me convenció ese planteo, ni antes ni hoy, ni con la televisión de los 70 y 80, ni con el tiktok de hoy.Esto no quita que puede haber gente que tenga alguna adicción, etcétera, etcétera. Pero yo no creo que toda la sociedad sea adicta hoy a la pantallita. Deja de ser adicción. Okey. Esto no implica que haya que no tener una visión crítica. Esto no implica que haya que eventualmente regular los usos de ciertas tecnologías, obviamente.Pero de ahí a pensar que estamos en un escenario apocalíptico, de idiotización total del homo sapiens o de alienación. Yo no lo veo, ni creo que lo los estudios empíricos confirmen eso. Más allá que a veces hay elecciones y no nos gusten los resultados.Pero ahí es interesante, porque cuando tu propio partido político pierde, siempre se le echa la culpa a los medios porque ganó el otro. Pero cuando tu partido político gana, nadie dice nada de los medios. Ganamos porque somos mejores, [00:48:00] porque tenemos mejores ideas, porque somos más democráticos, porque somos más bonitos.Entonces, claro te das cuenta que se usan los medios como chivo expiatorio para no reconocer las propias debilidades políticas a la hora de denunciar una propuesta o de seducir al electorado.Chris: Claro, claro. Ya pues estos temas son vastos y complejos. Y por eso me gusta, y por eso estoy muy agradecido por pasar este tiempo contigo, Carlos.Pero los temas requieren un profundo disciplina para comprender, o al menos según yo, como alguien que está muy nuevo a estos temas. Entonces, a nuestra época, parece que somos, según yo, arrastrados a una velocidad sin precedentes. Nuestras tecnologías están avanzando y quizás socavando simultáneamente nuestra capacidad de comprender lo que está sucediendo en el mundo. Los usamos como protesta a veces como, como mencionaste, [00:49:00] pero sin una comprensión más profunda de cómo nos usan también. Entonces tengo la curiosidad por saber qué papel desempeña la ecología de los medios en la redención o curación de la cultura en nuestro tiempo. Cómo podría la ecología de los medios ser un aliado, quizás, en nuestros caminos? Carlos: Sí, yo creo que esta idea estaba presente, no? En los teóricos de la media ecology, digamos la primera generación.Ahora que lo pienso, estaba también en la semiótica de Umberto Eco, no? Cuando decía la semiótica más allá de analizar cómo se construye significado, también aporta a mejorar la vida significativa, o sea, la vida cultural, la vida comunicacional, nuestro funcionamiento como sujeto, digamos. Y yo creo que en ese sentido, la media ecology también.Digamos, si nosotros entendemos el ecosistema mediático, vamos a poder sacarlo mejor [00:50:00] coevolucionar mejor. Vamos a ser más responsables también a la hora de generar contenidos, a la hora de retwittear de manera a veces automática ciertas cosas. Yo creo que es todo un crecimiento de vivir una vida mediática sana, que yo creo que hoy existe esa posibilidad.Yo estoy en Twitter desde el 2008-2009 y sólo dos veces tuve así un encontronazo y bloqueé a una persona mal educada. Después el resto de mi vida en Twitter, es rica de información de contactos. Aprendo muchísimo me entero de cosas que se están investigando. O sea, también están uno elegir otras cosas.Y por ejemplo, donde veo que yo hay que hay redes que no me aportan nada, no directamente ni entro. También es eso de aprender a sacar lo mejor de este ecosistema mediático. Y lo mismo para el ecosistema natural. Así como estamos aprendiendo a preocuparnos de dónde viene la comida, [00:51:00] cuánto tiempo se va a tardar en disolver este teléfono móvil por los componentes que tiene. Bueno, también es tomar conciencia de eso. Ya sea en el mundo natural, como en el mundo de la comunicación. Y yo creo que todos estos conocimientos, en este caso, la media ecology nos sirve para captar eso, no? Y mejorar nosotros también como sujetos, que ya no somos más el centro del universo, que esta es la otra cuestión. Somos un átomo más perdido entre una complejidad muy grande. Chris: Mm. Mm, pues que estas obras y trabajos y estudios tuyos y de los demás nos da la capacidad de leer y comprender ese complejidad, no?O sea, parece más y más complejo cada vez y nos requiere como más y más discernimiento. Entonces, yo creo que pues igual, hemos metido mucho en tu voluntad y capacidad de [00:52:00] hacer eso y ponerlo en el mundo. Entonces, finalmente Carlos me gustaría a extender mi agradecimiento y la de nuestros oyentes por tu tiempo hoy, tu consideración y tu trabajo.Siento que pues, la alfabetización mediática y la ecología de los medios son extremadamente deficientes en nuestro tiempo y su voluntad de preguntar sobre estas cosas y escribir sobre ellas es una medicina para un mundo quebrantado y para mi turístico. Entonces, así que muchísimas gracias, Carlos, por venir hoy.Carlos: Gracias. Te agradezco por las preguntas. Y bueno, yo creo que el tema del turismo es un tema que está ocupa lugar central hoy. Si tú estuvieras en Barcelona, verías que todos los días se está debatiendo este tema. Así que yo creo que bueno, adelante con esa reflexión y esa investigación sobre el turismo, porque es muy pertinente y necesaria.Chris: Pues sí, gracias. [00:53:00] Igual yo siento que hay una conexión fuerte entre esas definiciones más amplias de turismo y la ecología de medios. O sea, ha abierto una apertura muy grande para mí para entender el turismo más profundamente. Igual antes de terminar Carlos, cómo podrían nuestros oyentes encontrar tus libros y tu trabajo?Sé que hemos hablado de dos libros que escribiste, pero hay mucho más. Muchísimo más. Entonces, cómo se pueden encontrarlos y encontrarte?Carlos: Lo más rápido es en en mi blog, que es hipermediaciones.com Ahí van a encontrar información sobre todos los libros que voy publicando, etcétera, etc. Y después, bueno, yo soy muy activo, como dije en Twitter X. Me encuentran la letra CEscolari y de Carlos es mi Twitter. Y bueno, también ahí trato de difundir información sobre estos [00:54:00] temas.Como dije antes, aprendo mucho de esa red y trato de también devolver lo que me dan poniendo siempre información pertinente. Buenos enlaces. Y no pelearme mucho.Chris: Muy bien, muy bien, pues voy a asegurar que esos enlaces y esas páginas estén ya en la sección de tarea el sitio web de El fin del turismo cuando sale el episodio. Igual otras entrevistas y de tus libros. No hay falta. Entonces, con mucho gusto, los voy compartiendo. Bueno, Carlos, muchísimas gracias y lo aprecio mucho.Carlos: Muchas gracias y nos vemos en México.English TranscriptionChris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast The End of Tourism, Carlos. Thank you for being able to speak with me today. It's a great pleasure to have you here with me today.Carlos: No, thank you, Chris, for the invitation. It is a great pleasure and honor to chat with you, a great traveler and, well, I have never directly investigated the subject of tourism.Well, I understand that we are going to talk about media ecology and collateral issues that can help us better understand, give meaning to all that is happening in the world of tourism. Well, I work in Barcelona. I don't live in the city exactly, but I work at the university in Barcelona, in the central area.Well, every time I go to the city, the number of tourists increases every day and the debate on tourism in all its dimensions increases. So it is a topic that is on the agenda, right?Chris: Yes, well I imagine that even if you don't like to think or if you don't want to think about tourism there, it is inevitable to have a personal lesson [00:01:00] from that industry.Carlos: Yes, to the point that it is almost becoming a taxonomic criterion, right? ...of classification or cities with a lot of tourists, cities or places without tourists that are the most sought after until they are filled with tourists. So we are practically in a vicious circle.Chris: Well, at some point I know that it changes, the cycle breaks, at least to account for what we are doing with the behavior.And I understand that this also has a lot to do with the ecology of the media, the lack of ability to understand our behaviors, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, etc. So, before continuing with your work and deeds, I would like to ask you about your path and your life.First, I wonder if you could define for our listeners what media ecology is and how you [00:02:00] became interested in this field? How did you come to dedicate your life to this study?Carlos: Yes. Let's see a little bit. There is one, this is the official history. We would say media ecology, it is a field of research, let's say, that was born in the 60s. We must take into account above all the work of Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian researcher who is very famous worldwide. He was perhaps the most famous media researcher philosopher in the 60s and 70s.And a colleague of his, Neil Postman, who was at New York University, was a bit, let's say, among the people who surrounded these two references, no, in the 60s, from there it was brewing, let's say, what was later called media ecology. It is said that the first person to talk about media ecology, who applied this metaphor to the media, was Marshall McLuhan himself in some private conversations, [00:03:00] letters that were sent to each other in the late 50s, early 60s, by researchers on these topics?Let's say the first public appearance of the concept of media ecology was a lecture in 1968 by Neil Postman. It was a public speech that talked about how the media transforms us and how the media transforms us, forming an environment in which we grow, develop, and so on. And we are sometimes not very aware of this environment that surrounds us and shapes us.He first used the concept of media ecology in a public lecture. And then, if we go back to the early 70s, Postman himself created the first program in media ecology at NYU, at New York University. So, in 73, 74 and 75, what I call the second generation began to emerge, of people [00:04:00] some of whom were trained in these courses in New York.For example, Christine Nystrom was the first PhD thesis on my ecology; people like Paul Levinson who in 1979 defended a PhD thesis directed by Postman on the evolution of the media, right? And the same thing happened in Toronto in the 70s. Marshall McLuhan died in December 80.Let's say that the 70s were his last decade of intellectual production. And there are a number of collaborators at that time, very young people like Robert Logan, Derrick De Kerchove, who later continued to work a bit along these lines, along these lines. And there we talk about the Canadian front, eh?This whole second generation was developing, expanding and applying. Let's not forget Eric McLuhan, Marshall's son, who was also part of this whole movement. [00:05:00] And if I remember correctly, in 2000, the Media Ecology Association was created, which is the Media Ecology Association, which is an academic, scientific organization that brings together people who deal with media ecology.If we think at a more scientific epistemological level, we can think of this metaphor of media ecology from two or three perspectives. On the one hand, this idea that media create environments. This is a very strong idea of Marsha McLuhan, of Postman and of this whole group, isn't it? The media - "medium" understood in a very broad sense, no, any technology could be a medium for them.For Marsha McLuhan, the wheel is a medium. A telescope is a medium. A radio is a medium and television is a medium, right? I mean, any technology can be considered a medium. Let's say that these media, these technologies, generate a [00:06:00] environment that transforms us. It transforms our way, sometimes our way of thinking, our way of perceiving the world, our conception of time and space.And we are not aware of that change. Let's think that, I don't know, before 1800, if someone had to make a trip of a thousand kilometers (and here we are approaching tourism) kilometers was a trip that had to be planned many months in advance. With the arrival of the train, we are already in 1800, those kilometers were shortened. Let's say no? There we see as if today they tell us 1000 kilometers.Well, yes, we take a plane. It's an hour, an hour and a quarter of a journey. Today, 1000 kilometres is much less than 200 years ago and even in terms of time, time has changed. Right? All of that is a consequence, let's say, of this change, our perception is a consequence of a series of media and technologies.The railroad. Obviously, today we have airplanes. The same digital networks that have somewhat brought us this idea of "time [00:07:00] real," this anxiety of wanting everything fast, right? That is also a consequence of these environmental changes generated by the media and technologies, eh? This is a very strong idea, when McLuhan and Postman talked about this in the 60s, they were strong intuitions that they had from a very intelligent observation of reality. Today, cognitive sciences, or rather neuroscience, have confirmed these hypotheses. In other words, today there are a series of methodologies to study the brain and we can already see how technologies...The media even affects the physical structure of the brain. Right? Another thing that is historical is that the media affects our memory. This comes from Plato 2,500 years ago, who said that writing would kill the memory of men. Well, we can think for ourselves, right?Or at least this generation, who [00:08:00] lived in a world before and after mobile apps. 30 years ago, 25 years ago, I had 30-40 phone numbers in my memory. Today I don't have any. And let's also think about GPS, right? At one time, taxi drivers in London, which is a Latin city, knew the city by heart. And today, that's no longer necessary because they have GPS.And when they went to study the brains of London taxi drivers, they saw that certain areas of the brain had shrunk, so to speak, which are the areas that manage the spatial part. McLuhan already talked about this in the 60s. He said that changes narcotize certain areas of the mind, he said.But well, we see that a lot of empirical research, very cutting-edge neuroscience research is confirming all these thoughts, all these things that were said in the 60s onwards, by media ecology. Another possibility is to understand [00:09:00] this as a media ecosystem, Marshall McLuhan always said we cannot give it meaning,We cannot understand a medium in isolation from other media. It is as if media only acquire meaning in relation to other media. Neil Postman and many other people from the school of media ecology also defend this position, that, well, we cannot understand the history of cinema if we do not link it to video games, if we do not link it to the appearance of television.And so with all the media, right? Eh? There are some very interesting works. For example, about how in the 19th century, different media, we could say, co-evolved with each other. The press, the telegraph. The train, which also transported newspapers, news agencies appeared. I mean, we see how it is very difficult to understand the development of the press in the 19th century and we don't link it to the telephone, if we don't link it to photography, if we don't link it to radio photography, [00:10:00] also later on.I mean, this idea is very strong. It is also one of the principles that I consider fundamental to this vision, which would be that the media are not alone, they are part of an ecosystem and if we want to understand what is happening and how all this works, we cannot, uh, analyze the media in isolation from the rest.There is a third interpretation. I don't know if it's too metaphorical, right? Above all, people in Italy like the researcher Fausto Colombo from Milan or Michele Cometa, he is a researcher from Sicily, Michele Cometa who talks about the turn, the ecomedia turn. These researchers are moving in a whole conception according to which, we are in a unique media ecosystem that is contaminated.It is contaminated by "fake news" it is contaminated by false news, it is contaminated by hate speech, etc., etc. So they, let's say, take up this ecological metaphor to say [00:11:00] We have to clean this ecosystem just as the natural ecosystem is contaminated, it needs a cleaning intervention, let's say a purification, eh?The media ecosystem is also in the same danger, isn't it? And these people are also calling attention, and I am very close to this line of work on the material dimension of communication. And this also has to do with tourism, right? The environmental impact that communication has today.Training an artificial intelligence involves a huge amount of electricity; keeping social networks running, eh, TikTok, YouTube, whatever, involves millions of servers running that suck up electricity and also have to be cooled, consuming even more electricity. And that has a significant impact on the climate.So, well, let's say, we see that this metaphor of the ecological, applied to the media, gives rise to two or three interpretations.Chris: Mmm. [00:12:00] Wow. I feel like when I started taking that course from Andrew McLuhan, Marshall's grandson, as I mentioned, it changed my perspective completely - on the world, on the way I understand and how I don't understand our technologies, my movements, etc. But now, from a person who has been studying this for decades, I would like to know how you started. I mean, Andrew, for example, has the excuse of his lineage, not his father and his grandfather.But then, as a young Argentine, he began learning about media ecology.Carlos: Well, I'll tell you. I studied communication in Argentina, in Rosario. I finished college. The last exam was on June 24, 1986, which was the day that Lionel Messi was born in Rosario, Argentina, on the same day. And [00:13:00] I worked, I collaborated in a class in a subject that was communication theories.And I even taught until 1990, three years, because after that I went to live in Italy. At that time, we read Marshall McLuhan, but it was a very ideologically biased reading. In Latin America, you must have seen it in Mexico. There is a whole history, a tradition of criticism from the media, especially of everything that comes from the United States, and Canada is very close to the United States.So, let's say that in the 70s and 80s and until today I would tell you that Marshall McLuhan was often criticized because he did not criticize the media. I mean, he had a vision. He said, Neil Postman, yes, he had a very critical vision. But in that case, this was one of the big differences between Postman and McLuhan, that Marshall McLuhan, at least in [00:14:00] public, he did not criticize the media. He said, well, I am a researcher, I send out probes. I am exploring what is happening.And he never joined in... And I think that was very clever of him... he never joined in this worldwide chorus of criticism of the media. At that time, television was a monster for many people.Children were not supposed to watch television. A bit like what happens today with cell phones and what happens today with TikTok. At that time, television was the monster. At that time, there was a lot of research in the United States, which was already based on the premise that television and the media are bad for people.We see that it is a story that repeats itself. I think that in that sense, Marshall McLuhan, very intelligently, did not join that critical chorus and he really dedicated himself to thinking about the media from a much freer perspective, not anchored by this vision that I believe is too ideologized, which is very strong in Latin America. It is very strong. This does not imply [00:15:00] letting down one's guard, not being critical. On the contrary.But I think that true critical thinking starts from not saying so much ideology, we say "this is already bad. Let's look at this." There will be good things. There will be bad things. There will be things, which is undeniable, that the media, even if we say they are good, will transform us. And I think that was the important thing about the McLuhanian idea.So my first approach to McLuhan was from the perspective of critical authors who, well, yes, come from the United States, they don't criticize the media. We're going to criticize him, right? And that was my first approach to Marshall McLuhan.I went to Italy in the 90s. I was out of college for almost eight years, working in digital media, web development, multimedia products, and pretext. And in the late 90s, I said, I want to go back to college. I want to be a PhD. And I said, "I want to do a PhD. Well. Being in Italy, the PhD was going to be in semiotics." So I did a [00:16:00] PhD. My thesis was on semiotics of interfaces.There I had a vision of digital interfaces that consider, for example, instruments like the mouse or joystick as extensions of our body, right? The mouse extends the hand and puts it inside the screen, right? Or the joystick or any other element of the digital interface? Of course. If we talk about the mouse being an extension of the hand, that is a McLuhanian idea.The media as extensions of the human being as a subject. So, of course, I reread McLuhan in Italian at the end of the 90s, and I reconciled with McLuhan because I found many interesting things to understand precisely the interaction with digital machines.In 2002, I moved with my family to Spain. I returned to university life. [00:17:00] And there I began to study the relationship between old and new media. Then I recovered the idea of ecosystem. I recovered the whole new idea, the id

Videodrome (1983; Dir.: David Cronenberg) Canon Fodder Episode 39 Daniel and Corky put on their finest Canadian tuxedos to review James Woods in the body horror classic Videodrome. But did your hosts “open up to” Cronenberg's vision, or were their torso tape players incompatible with the film's McLuhan-inspired medium-is-the-message? […] The post Videodrome – Canon Fodder Episode 39 appeared first on Dare Daniel & Canon Fodder Podcasts.

I, Stewart Alsop, am thrilled to welcome Leon Coe back to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast for a second deep dive. This time, we journeyed from the Renaissance and McLuhan's media theories straight into the heart of theology, church history, and the very essence of faith, exploring how ancient wisdom and modern challenges intertwine. It was a fascinating exploration, touching on everything from apostolic succession to the nature of sin and the search for meaning in a secular age.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversationTimestamps00:43 I kick things off by asking Leon about the Renaissance, Martin Luther, and the profound impact of the printing press on religion.01:02 Leon Coe illuminates Marshall McLuhan's insights on how technologies, like print, shape our consciousness and societal structures.03:25 Leon takes us back to early Church history, discussing the Church's life and sacraments, including the Didache, well before the Bible's formal canonization.06:00 Leon explains the scriptural basis for Peter as the "rock" of the Church, the foundation for the office of the papacy.07:06 We delve into the concept of apostolic succession, where Leon describes the unbroken line of ordination from the apostles.11:57 Leon clarifies Jesus's relationship to the Law, referencing Matthew 5:17 where Jesus states he came to fulfill, not abolish, the Law.12:20 I reflect on the intricate dance of religion, culture, and technology, and the sometimes bewildering, "cosmic joke" nature of our current reality.16:46 I share my thoughts on secularism potentially acting as a new, unacknowledged religion, and how it often leaves a void in our search for purpose.19:28 Leon introduces what he calls the "most terrifying verse in the Bible," Matthew 7:21, emphasizing the importance of doing the Father's will.24:21 Leon discusses the Eucharist as the new Passover, drawing connections to Jewish tradition and Jesus's institution of this central sacrament.Key InsightsTechnology's Shaping Power: McLuhan's Enduring Relevance. Leon highlighted how Marshall McLuhan's theories are crucial for understanding history. The shift from an oral, communal society to an individualistic one via the printing press, for instance, directly fueled the Protestant Reformation by enabling personal interpretation of scripture, moving away from a unified Church authority.The Early Church's Foundation: Life Before the Canon. Leon emphasized that for roughly 300 years before the Bible was officially canonized, the Church was actively functioning. It had established practices, sacraments (like baptism and the Eucharist), and teachings, as evidenced by texts like the Didache, demonstrating a lived faith independent of a finalized scriptural canon.Peter and Apostolic Succession: The Unbroken Chain. A core point from Leon was Jesus designating Peter as the "rock" upon which He would build His Church. This, combined with the principle of apostolic succession—the laying on of hands in an unbroken line from the apostles—forms the Catholic and Orthodox claim to authoritative teaching and sacramental ministry.Fulfillment, Not Abolition: Jesus and the Law. Leon clarified that Jesus, as stated in Matthew 5:17, came not to abolish the Old Testament Law but to fulfill it. This means the Mosaic Law finds its ultimate meaning and completion in Christ, who institutes a New Covenant.Secularism's Spiritual Vacuum: A Modern Religion? I, Stewart, posited that modern secularism, while valuing empiricism, often acts like a new religion that explicitly rejects the spiritual and miraculous. Leon agreed this can lead to a sense of emptiness, as humans inherently long for purpose and connection to a creator, a void secularism struggles to fill.The Criticality of God's Will: Beyond Lip Service. Leon pointed to Matthew 7:21 ("Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven...") as a stark reminder. True faith requires more than verbal profession; it demands actively doing the will of the Father, implying that actions and heartfelt commitment are essential for salvation.The Eucharist as Central: The New Passover and Real Presence. Leon passionately explained the Eucharist as the new Passover, instituted by Christ. Referencing John 6, he stressed the Catholic belief in the Real Presence—that the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Christ—which is essential for spiritual life and communion with God.Reconciliation and Purity: Restoring Communion. Leon explained the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) as a vital means, given through the Church's apostolic ministry, to restore communion with God after sin. He also touched upon Purgatory as a state of purification for overcoming attachments to sin, ensuring one is perfectly ordered to God before entering Heaven.Contact Information*   Leon Coe: @LeonJCoe on Twitter (X)

Everyone's arguing over politics, education, technology, and ideology — but what if the real crisis is deeper than all of that? In this episode, we explore how modern society is losing its capacity for thinking itself. From McGilchrist's divided brain theory to McLuhan's media prophecy and Allan Paivio's forgotten dual coding model, this episode uncovers how we lost the ability to hold attention, create meaning, and think across time. And why we have to get it back — now. #ThinkingCrisis #McGilchrist #McLuhan #DualCoding #Paivio #AttentionEconomy #RightBrain #MemoryMatters #PhilosophyPodcast #EducationalReform #DeepThinking #CognitiveHealth

I returned to Captain Phil's Planet on WUSB (Stony Brook University) Radio the other day to talk to  Captain Phil about Tom Cooper's new book, Wisdom Weavers: The Lives and Thought of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, to be pubished by Connected Editions (my publishing company) on May 1.   As we discussed in the interview, I'll be interviewing Tom about his book via Zoom on the evening of Wisdom Weavers' publication -- 8pm (New York time), May 1.  If you'd like to attend, email me at Levinson at Fordham dot edu and I'll be happy to send the Zoom URL to you. In the meantime, check out my Marshall McLuhan playlist on YouTube for 50 of my lectures, interviews, etc about McLuhan over the past 20 years.  Here are my two books about McLuhan: Digital McLuhan and McLuhan in an Age of Social Media.  You'll also find numerous essays about McLuhan on my Academia.edu page.  And, if you're a fan of audio podcasts, just search on "McLuhan" on my Light On Light Through podcast page.

Dedicated to Michael DelGiorno — morning radio oracle, culture war whisperer, and the guy who made Chris hit record, via Your Morning Show With Michael DelGiornoThis episode was born out of a single spark: Michael DelGiorno's phrase, “majors as minors and minors as majors.” It hit Chris like a lightning bolt from a morning show in Arlington. What followed is a whirlwind of class politics, party realignment, cultural critique, and affectionate contempt for modern tribalism.

Bob Dobbs was Marshall McLuhan's archivist, and is a renegade McLuhan scholar. In this episode we discuss the work of James Joyce, Marshall McLuhan, and Joyce's Finnegans Wake.Dobb's site: https://ionandbob.com/---Become part of the Hermitix community:Hermitix Twitter - / hermitixpodcast Hermitix Discord - / discord Support Hermitix:Hermitix Subscription - https://hermitix.net/subscribe/ Patreon - / hermitix Donations: - https://www.paypal.me/hermitixpodHermitix Merchandise - http://teespring.com/stores/hermitix-2Bitcoin Donation Address: 3LAGEKBXEuE2pgc4oubExGTWtrKPuXDDLKEthereum Donation Address: 0x31e2a4a31B8563B8d238eC086daE9B75a00D9E74

Jim talks with John Robb about the ideas in his recent essay "Blitzing DC," about how a networked organization took over Washington. They discuss the early roots of network warfare in Iraq, McLuhan-esque societal rewiring, open source dynamics & plausible promise, the Arab Spring & Occupy movements, empathy triggers, Trump's 2016 campaign as a hybrid swarm, The_Donald as a meme amplifier, the Blue Network's counter-response, the George Floyd protests & moral framework, censorship & 'the long night', digital rights & moderation, the Ukraine conflict & swarm response, the Red Network reconfiguration, digital ledgers & truth-seeking accounts, the professionalization of Red digital warriors, network decision-making at a societal level, the government contracting corruption, defense procurement issues, the D.C. area wealth concentration, the future of network organizations, and much more. Episode Transcript Global Guerrillas (Substack) JRS EP 254 - John Robb on What Went Wrong with America "Blitzing DC," by John Robb "The Open-Source War," by John Robb (New York Times) "Musk and Moderation," by Jim Rutt (Quillette) John Robb is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot. He's started numerous successful technology companies, including one in the financial sector that sold for $295 million and one that pioneered the software we currently see in use at Facebook and Twitter. John's insight on technology and governance has appeared on the BBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Economist, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. John served as a pilot in a tier-one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.

This week on Humans On The Loop I welcome Andrew McLuhan, author, teacher, and Director of The McLuhan Institute, a generational ark for media theory in a world that desperately needs more help understanding the relationships between our tools, our minds, and our society. Subscribe, Rate, & Comment on YouTube • Apple Podcasts • SpotifyPlease consider becoming a patron or making tax-deductible monthly contributions at every.org/humansontheloop. (You'll get all the same perks.)Project LinksRead the project pitch & planning docDig into the full episode and essay archivesJoin the online commons for Wisdom x Technology on DiscordThe Future Fossils Discord Server abides!Contact me about partnerships, consulting, your life, or other mysteriesChapters0:00:00 - Teaser0:01:17 - Intro0:06:38 - Partial Agency & The Great Inversion0:11:53 - Three Generations of McLuhan Theorists0:21:51 - Poetry & Prose, Narratives & Networks0:34:43 - Artists Show Us The Way0:41:29 - The Persistence of Memory vs. The Web As Palimpsest0:51:36 - AI in The Tetrad0:58:19 - Opting Out & The Slow Food Media Diet1:05:40 - Outro & AnnouncementsMentioned Media & PeopleMagick and Enlightenment, with Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford by Weird Studies PodcastNora BatesonGregory BatesonWilliam Irwin ThompsonFrom Nowhere by Eric WargoThe Ascent of Information by Caleb ScharfEverything Everywhere All At OncePresent Shock by Douglas RushkoffUnderstanding Media by Marshall McLuhanThe Interior Landscape by Marshall McLuhanEzra PoundPreface to Plato by Eric HavelockJay-ZT.S. Eliot This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Discover what the future holds for humankind and explore the intersection of human consciousness and the digital age.   - Challenges the boundaries of possibility pointing toward a new Renaissance - Delves into the creative mysteries of quantum paradox and depth psychology - Offers a positive vision for these challenging times   "Two things to say about Douglas Grunther's new book: (1) Read it, and (2) Read it soon.  In our current age of cynical defeatism, it offers a refreshing vision of how we may disentangle ourselves from the current consensus trance holding us back...Grunther plants seeds of hope in a format both readable and compelling." --Dana Sawyer, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion, Maine College of Art     "Doug Grunther is a radio bodhisattva." --Robert Thurman, Noted American Buddhist writer and first Westerner ordained by the Dalai Lama   Written by the renowned creator and host of the Woodstock Roundtable, Douglas Grunther's The Quantum & The Dream tackles some of the most daring and exhilarating questions of our time, taking readers on a thrilling odyssey through the captivating world of quantum theory, AI, and the creative depths of the unconscious mind. While many foresee a dark and dangerous future, Grunther offers an optimistic view of the consciousness shifts shaping our future.   The Quantum & The Dream celebrates the secret corridors of the mind, the rich tapestry of myth, and the evolving media landscape, urging readers to push past the boundaries of what we thought possible to harness the power of our imaginations. Readers can explore fascinating thought experiments inspired by visionaries like Einstein, Jung, Joseph Campbell, and McLuhan, along with cutting-edge insights from leading creative thinkers of our era. Filled with expansive ideas, The Quantum & The Dream offers a pathway toward the New Renaissance.     "In Doug Grunther's sweeping, deep, and delightful new book we are led on a journey through much of the 20th century's innovative and challenging new ideas.  From quantum theory and psychoanalysis, to the Internet, and an emerging holistic view of nature and consciousness, Grunther provides an integrative and positive understanding of our current direction and ultimate integration of seeming opposites." --Neal Goldsmith, Ph.D., psychotherapist, public speaker, and AI analyst  

Technology is shaping our world at an unprecedented rate—but how should Christians respond? Are we thoughtfully engaging with the digital world, or are we being shaped by it in ways we don’t even realize? In this episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer sits down with Dr. Derek Schuurman, Professor of Computer Science at Calvin University and author of Shaping a Digital World: Faith, Culture, and Computer Technology. Together, they explore how theology, technology, and Christian discipleship intersect in our increasingly digital lives.

Writing is an extension of our voice, cars of our legs, guns of our fists, telephones of our ears, televisions of our eyes…Marshall McLuhan considered all media to be technology that extended the human body. The arrival of a medium like writing can completely reorder social relations because it has the power to “shape and control the scale and form of human association and action.” McLuhan's idea of extensions is arguably the beginning of modern media theory, but it is not without its limitations. Media Objects is produced in collaboration with Media Studies at Cornell University. With support from the college of Arts and Sciences and the Society for the Humanities. Editing and academic counsel from Erik Born, Jeremy Braddock, and Paul Fleming.

The fairly obscure, cult favorite, 70s Chicago prog band, McLuhan may very well be the least likely band to have entered 2025 with a string of live dates … but here we are. 50+ years after the release of their debut album, “Anomaly,” it’s getting a second life with a repressing/rerelease and the band is doing a monthly residency at Montrose Saloon. I sat down with band leader Neal Rosner (bass/vocals) before McLuhan’s most recent Montrose Saloon gig to talk about how the band made it this far into the 21st century, the offbeat songs on Anomaly, and what the Chicago scene was like long before most of Car Con Carne’s audience was born. See McLuhan when they return to Montrose Saloon on March 6 and April 3. ## Car Con Carne sponsored by Easy Automation: easy-automation.net Transform your living space with cutting-edge home automation. Experience seamless control over audio/video, lighting, climate, security, and more. Embrace the future of smart living – your home, your rules. Get a quote by visiting easy-automation.net, or give Dan a call at 630.730.3728 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

durée : 00:03:32 - Un monde connecté - par : François Saltiel - Marshall McLuhan, philosophe des médias, défendait en 1969 l'idée que les médias eux-mêmes sont plus importants que les contenus qu'ils véhiculent. Un entretien, réédité sous le titre "Fragment d'un village global", est l'occasion de redécouvrir sa pensée à l'ère de l'intelligence artificielle.

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 401, in which I interview Dan Abella about The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival, NYC, 14 Dec 2024. (Kendall Brown, Operations Manager for the Festival, joins us in the interview.) Relevant links: The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival written interview with me by Evan Levine, in which I discuss Hegel's "spirit of an age" (see 10th question in the interview) Dan Abella's play, "Timothy X's Journey from PTSD to Wholeness," to be performed live at the Festival [scroll down] McLuhan in an Age of Social Media Lioness (streaming on Paramount+)

The metaverse represents a profound leap forward in human communication, echoing Marshall McLuhan's prophetic vision of the "global village." McLuhan, whose ideas shaped one of my first published pieces in college, foresaw media reshaping society by compressing time and space. The metaverse takes this transformation further, creating a seamless digital realm where geography becomes irrelevant, and interaction transcends physical boundaries. It promises a world where avatars navigate immersive environments, unshackled by physical limitations. Tech giants like Facebook and Roblox have seized on this vision, racing to construct interconnected realms that merge augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and tangible human experiences. Yet, beneath this glossy promise of innovation lies a more unsettling reality. As the metaverse expands, it invites scrutiny over its potential to erode authentic human connections, amplify privacy risks, and upend societal norms. Living simultaneously in virtual and physical worlds demands more than adaptation; it forces us to confront the profound implications for mental well-being and the very fabric of social interaction. Data Collection and Surveillance Risks The metaverse's expansive virtual landscapes require extensive data collection to function smoothly and deliver personalized experiences. It includes tracking users' behaviors, interactions, and preferences to tailor the digital environment and enhance engagement. However, the volume of data gathered poses significant privacy risks, as it could be exploited or mishandled, leading to potential misuse or unauthorized access. Biometric data, such as facial recognition and physiological metrics, are increasingly integrated into the metaverse to create more immersive and interactive experiences. While this technology offers advanced personalization and security features, it also introduces substantial privacy concerns. Unauthorized access to biometric data could lead to identity theft or digital abuse, amplifying the risks associated with personal data breaches. Given these risks, robust privacy safeguards within the metaverse are urgently needed. Implementing stringent data protection measures and ensuring transparency about data usage can mitigate potential threats. Establishing clear data handling and security protocols can help protect users from privacy violations and maintain trust in the virtual environment. Addiction and Social Isolation in the Metaverse The immersive nature of the metaverse presents a significant risk of addiction. As individuals engage more deeply with virtual worlds, the line between reality and the digital realm blurs, creating an environment where users may prefer virtual experiences over real-life interactions. This immersion can lead to compulsive behavior, where the metaverse becomes a primary focus of an individual's life, overshadowing physical and social needs. Excessive engagement with virtual environments can severely impact real-world relationships and responsibilities. Users might withdraw from family, friends, and everyday obligations, prioritizing virtual interactions and activities. This shift can result in strained relationships and neglect of personal duties, as the allure of the metaverse often offers an escape from real-world challenges and responsibilities. The psychological effects of prolonged virtual engagement are profound. Users may experience increased isolation as their real-world social interactions diminish. Additionally, virtual environments' constant stimulation and gratification can lead to decreased attention spans and difficulty managing real-world tasks. This imbalance can contribute to mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, as individuals struggle to reconcile their virtual and physical lives. Digital Property and Economic Manipulation The metaverse represents an unprecedented digital frontier where virtual real estate and assets have emerged as valuable commodi...

Il Medium è il Messaggio - La Cultura della Performance e i suoi Effetti sulla SocietàCosa ha da insegnarci Marshall McLuhan con il suo "The medium is the message" sul mondo dei contenuti digitali e dei social media? In che modo il paradigma di fruizione dei media digitali sta trasformando la cultura e la società? Come scegliere il social o la piattaforma sulla quale pubblicare i nostri contenuti per avere il massimo dell'impatto?Scopriamolo insieme partendo dalla celebre frase di McLuhan fino alla piattaforma per scrittori emergenti Wattpad ( https://www.wattpad.com/ ).

In this episode, we take you back to the Chicago progressive rock scene of the late 60s/early 70s as we speak with Neal Rosner, founding member of the band McLuhan.  Formed in Chicago in the late 60s, they made some of the most unique progressive rock/jazz/fusion music of their era. They only released one album, "Anomaly," but it is a cult classic, and now the band has reunited after all these years and has released the album for the first time in 5 decades!

In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop welcomes Leon Coe, founder of Amplify Intelligence, to explore the cutting edge of AI and its practical applications in workflows, agentic systems, and beyond. They discuss the evolution of autonomous agents, the shift toward combining traditional code with large language models, and how these integrations are reshaping both business processes and personal productivity. The conversation touches on the potential for AI to transform repetitive tasks, the role of probabilistic versus deterministic AI models, and Leon's perspective on the future of a more AI-enabled economy. Leon also shares thoughts on balancing creativity with automation, especially for non-technical users, while Stewart probes the deeper implications of our increasingly AI-driven world. To learn more about Leon's work, visit Amplify Intelligence or connect with him on Twitter @LeonJCoe.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversation!Timestamps00:00 Introduction to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast00:26 Understanding AI Agents02:51 Agentic Workflows vs. Autonomous Agents04:31 Productizing Large Language Models06:56 Challenges and Innovations in AI Adoption10:15 Enhancing Workflows with AI18:30 Technical Insights and Practical Applications25:29 Exploring Future Shock and AI Adoption27:17 The Economic Impact of AI29:01 The Evolution of AI Models31:01 Voice AI and Its Potential34:21 The Role of Social Media in AI Adoption41:01 Historical Perspectives on Media and Misinformation44:28 The Future of Media and AI45:30 Navigating the Digital Age with AI55:10 Concluding Thoughts and Future DiscussionsKey InsightsRedefining AI Agents: Leon introduces a unique perspective on AI agents, emphasizing that they don't have to be fully autonomous or self-directing to be useful. He defines an AI agent as simply the combination of large language models (LLMs) with traditional code, capable of producing workflows and taking actions. This broader view allows businesses to leverage agentic technology today by integrating LLMs into workflows in a controlled, deterministic way, similar to tools like Zapier but with enhanced intelligence.Adoption Challenges for Non-Technical Users: One of the biggest challenges in AI adoption, Leon argues, is bridging the gap between technical and non-technical users. Programmers and those familiar with building digital workflows can push AI's capabilities further by crafting complex queries and structured workflows. However, non-technical users often lack this mental framework, so introducing them to AI involves not only teaching specific tools but also new ways of conceptualizing and using automation to make their lives easier.AI for Personal Productivity and Business Efficiency: Leon explains how AI can revolutionize business workflows by injecting intelligence at different points. For example, an AI-enhanced workflow could automatically extract key insights from meetings, turn transcripts into actionable summaries, and even create custom reports with minimal human intervention. This not only saves time but also minimizes the risk of tasks falling through the cracks, which can improve productivity across entire organizations.Cost Optimization and Model Selection in AI Workflows: In building effective AI applications, choosing the right model and managing costs are essential. Leon illustrates how selecting cheaper, high-performance models, like Gemini Flash instead of more expensive alternatives, can make workflows more efficient and cost-effective. By carefully balancing speed, token limits, and other parameters, companies can optimize their AI usage and control expenses without sacrificing performance.The Future of Databases and Dynamic Information: The conversation explores a potentially transformative shift in data storage and retrieval, where static databases might be replaced by API calls to AI models that generate information dynamically. This approach could allow for more flexible and up-to-date data management, where only critical user data is stored traditionally, and the rest is created on-demand, reducing the need for static databases.Media Evolution and Personalized AI: Leon discusses how AI has the potential to shape media in unprecedented ways by generating hyper-personalized content for users, contrasting with the traditional, one-size-fits-all TV experience. As AI takes media personalization to new levels, it could further fragment audiences, changing how we relate to information and even how we form identities, which were once rooted in collective media experiences.Balancing Consumption and Creation in the Digital Age: Stewart and Leon share insights on moving from passive content consumption to active creation with AI tools. By harnessing AI as a productive force, users can redefine their relationship with digital media, turning social platforms into educational or note-taking spaces rather than time-sinks. Leon's experience with LinkedIn, where he engages by sharing valuable insights rather than merely consuming content, exemplifies this shift, suggesting that AI's real value may lie in its ability to empower individuals to create rather than consume.

Guest: Thibault Mathieu, Founder and CEO, Wilkins Avenue AROn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibaultmathieu/On Twitter | https://x.com/thibaultmathieu_____________________________Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals PodcastOn ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli_____________________________This Episode's SponsorsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?

Guest: Thibault Mathieu, Founder and CEO, Wilkins Avenue AROn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibaultmathieu/On Twitter | https://x.com/thibaultmathieu_____________________________Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals PodcastOn ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli_____________________________This Episode's SponsorsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 398, in which I interview Andrew Hoskins about the new book he is writing, The Deadbot Society: AI and the End of the Human Past. Relevant links: "AI and Memory" an article by Andrew Hoskins the AI-created video I mentioned in our conversation more about McLuhan in an Age of Social Media

In this conversation with Dale Howie and Jason Clark, Derryck McLuhan shares his transformative journey from a life steeped in 'churchianity' to a personal and dynamic relationship with God. He discusses the challenges of faith, the importance of personal encounters with the divine, and the quest for understanding one's own beliefs. The dialogue explores themes of union with the Trinity, the nature of theology, and the significance of personal experiences in shaping faith. Derryck emphasizes the need for authenticity in one's spiritual journey and the beauty of discovering God beyond traditional constructs. The guys explore the journey of faith, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, community, and living from a place of grace. They discuss the challenges of navigating spiritual life without rigid routines, the significance of understanding one's agenda with God, and the transformative power of love and connection. For more information on Derryck ⁠Facebook Derryck McLuhan Please rate, review, share, and subscribe! Podcast intro and outro music by ⁠Wilde Assembly --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rethinking-god/support

Mike Stephen learns about a new CTA surveillance pilot program from Justin Agrelo, community engagement reporter at The Trace, discusses the impact of ending cash bail in Illinois with State Senator Robert Peters (13th), and gets the lowdown on local prog rock band McLuhan from vocalist & bassist Neal Rosner.

Take the PCFM pill. Critical Media Theory at Theory Underground - From Marx, through McLuhan, to Baudrillard. Join ongoing research seminar and unlock past courses + forums on the TU Discord by becoming a member via the monthly subscription: https://theoryunderground.com/products/tu-subscription-tiers ABOUT Theory Underground is a research, publishing, and lecture institute. TU exists to develop the concept of timenergy in the context of critical social theory (CST). To get basically situated in this field you will have to know a handful of important figures from a bunch of areas of the humanities and social sciences. That would be a lot of work for you if not for the fact that Dave, Ann, and Mikey are consolidating hundreds of thousands of hours of effort into a pirate TV-radio-press that goes on tours and throws conferences and stuff. Enjoy a ton of its content here for free or get involved to access courses and the ongoing research seminars.  GET INVOLVED or SUPPORT  Join live sessions and unlock past courses and forums on the TU Discord by becoming a member via the monthly subscription! It's the hands-down best way to get the most out of the content if you are excited to learn the field and become a thinker in the milieu: https://theoryunderground.com/products/tu-subscription-tiers Pledge support to the production of the free content on YouTube and Podcast https://www.patreon.com/TheoryUnderground Fund the publishing work via the TU Substack, where original works by the TU writers is featured alongside original works by Slavoj Zizek, Todd McGowan, Chris Cutrone, Nina Power, Alenka Zupancic, et al. https://theoryunderground.substack.com/ Get TU books at a discount: https://theoryunderground.com/publications CREDITS / LINKS Missed a course at Theory Underground? Wrong! Courses at Theory Underground are available after the fact on demand via the membership. https://theoryunderground.com/courses If you want to help TU in a totally gratuitous way, or support, here is a way to buy something concrete and immediately useful https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2MAWFYUJQIM58? Buy Dave and Ann a coffee date: https://www.venmo.com/u/theoryunderground  https://paypal.me/theorypleeb If Theory Underground has helped you see that text-to-speech technologies are a useful way of supplementing one's reading while living a busy life, if you want to be able to listen to PDFs for yourself, then Speechify is recommended. Use the link below and Theory Underground gets credit! https://share.speechify.com/mzwBHEB  Follow Theory Underground on Duolingo: https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKTP747NSNMAOYEI  See Theory Underground memes and get occasional updates or thoughts via the Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/theory_underground MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk  

Discover what the future holds for humankind and explore the intersection of human consciousness and the digital age.- Challenges the boundaries of possibility pointing toward a new Renaissance- Delves into the creative mysteries of quantum paradox and depth psychology- Offers a positive vision for these challenging timesWritten by the renowned creator and host of the Woodstock Roundtable, Douglas Grunther's The Quantum & The Dream tackles some of the most daring and exhilarating questions of our time, taking readers on a thrilling odyssey through the captivating world of quantum theory, AI, and the creative depths of the unconscious mind. While many foresee a dark and dangerous future, Grunther offers an optimistic view of the consciousness shifts shaping our future.The Quantum & The Dream celebrates the secret corridors of the mind, the rich tapestry of myth, and the evolving media landscape, urging readers to push past the boundaries of what we thought possible to harness the power of our imaginations. Readers can explore fascinating thought experiments inspired by visionaries like Einstein, Jung, Joseph Campbell, and McLuhan, along with cutting-edge insights from leading creative thinkers of our era. Filled with expansive ideas, The Quantum & The Dream offers a pathway toward the New Renaissance.DOUGLAS GRUNTHER is the creator/host of the Woodstock Roundtable, a rollicking-and multi award-winning radio talk show spiced with humor and informed by his love of philosophy, depth psychology, and spiritual insight. His guests have been among the most original visionaries of our time. Grunther graduated from Columbia University, where he was a Rhodes Scholarship finalist. He has been the featured speaker in front of national audiences and is a dreamwork facilitator certified by Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Co-Founder of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. For more information about Douglas Grunther, please go to: http: //douglasgrunther.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/earth-ancients--2790919/support.

Andrew is the director of The McLuhan Institute, created in 2017 to continue the work begun by Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan. He lectures on McLuhan's ideas and offers courses for those interested in diving deeper into McLuhan's philosophies. He hopes to expand perspectives on the personal and social consequences of technology. Subscribe to his substack here: https://mcluhan.substack.comCheck out more on the McLuhan Institute here: https://themcluhaninstitute.comMentions here: The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion  by Marshall McLuhan Jon is the developer of the Coracle Nostr client and an OpenSats grantee. He is focused on discovering what a healthy social network would look like, and helping nostr make that vision a reality. Find Jon on Nostr at npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn , on twitter @hodlbod and on Coracle.social.Jordan Bush is the founder and the Head of Content and Education at TGFB Media and host of the Thank God for Bitcoin Podcast. Find Jordan on Twitter @jmbushwrites.The Thank For Nostr Podcast is a TGFB Media production. TGFB Media exists to educate and equip Christians to understand Bitcoin and use it for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere.

In this episode Barry and Mike continue their discussion of William Burroughs' cut-up method. They introduce Alex Kitnick's arguments about the Media is the Massage from his book Distant Early Warning: Marshall McLuhan and the Transformation of the Avant-Garde in order to illuminate Burroughs' practice.

Language can change reality and gnosis is found in life's contradictions. Lisa Maroski shows us the possibility that humanity is on the brink of a consciousness transformation that necessitates a shift in values, perspectives, and language. This all comes from her book Embracing Paradox, Evolving Language. Prepare for the ideas of Jung, Gebser, McLuhan, Taoism, and more. From the koans of the Möbius strip and Klein bottle to the lightning flashes in the goddess's voice in the Gnostic gospel Thunder, Perfect Mind, you'll find avenues to embrace a new magical language of co-creation with the cosmos.More on Lisa: https://lisamaroski.com/Get the book: https://amzn.to/3Mm7ye1 The Gnostic Tarot: https://www.makeplayingcards.com/sell/synkrasisHomepage: https://thegodabovegod.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aeonbyteAB Prime: https://thegodabovegod.com/members/subscription-levels/ Virtual Alexandria Academy: https://thegodabovegod.com/virtual-alexandria-academy/Voice Over services: https://thegodabovegod.com/voice-talent/ Astro Gnosis (Meet the Archons): https://thegodabovegod.com/meet-archon-replay/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/aeon-byte-gnostic-radio/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The recent global IT outage should be a warning to us all as to not put all our eggs in one basket. Canadian philosopher Professor Marshal McLuhan and journalist Vance Packard decades before the internet were warning us of the horrors of digital consolidation. The engineering of built in obsolescence and current theories of psychological obsolescence surly tell us that the blue screen of death is not only inevitable but also the ultimate outcome of the digital age.

Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! Fabuloso viaje musical de la mano de Carles Pinós y Carlos Romeo. Carlos regresa al Rarities con una selección de temas de distintos artistas utilizando como nexo a Robert Wyatt, concretamente Phil Manzanera, Nick Mason y Michael Mantler. Carles Pinós nos hablará de cuatro discos, en esta ocasión ha seleccionado a Ed Mann, Novalis, Mcluhan y Solstice. Presentado y dirigido por David Pintos. Edición: David Pintos www.subterranea.eu www.davidpintos.com Escucha este episodio completo y accede a todo el contenido exclusivo de Subterranea Podcast. Descubre antes que nadie los nuevos episodios, y participa en la comunidad exclusiva de oyentes en https://go.ivoox.com/sq/17710

We did this on tour as some of our prep for the TU series Critical Media Theory (CMT) which is one of the research threads Dave and Ann teach in their ongoing Snelgrove-McKerracher synthesis seminars. The best way to get access to those seminars and all that research, the forums, etc., is to become a monthly subscriber https://theoryunderground.com/product/tu-subscription-tiers/   ABOUT / CREDITS / LINKS Become a monthly TU Tier Subscriber to access to the TU HUB, which includes past, ongoing, and upcoming courses, special events, office hours, clubs, and critical feedback that will help you evolve your comprehension capacities and critical faculties, via the website here: https://theoryunderground.com/product/tu-subscription-tiers/    Don't have time for that but want to help anyway? Consider supporting the patreon here: Welcome to Theory Underground. https://www.patreon.com/TheoryUnderground   Get TU books at a discount: https://theoryunderground.com/publications   Theory Underground is a lecture, research, and publishing platform by and for working class intellectuals, autodidacts, and academics who want to do more than they are able to within the confines of academia.   Think of Theory Underground like a Jiu Jitsu gym for your brain. Or like a post-political theory church. It doesn't matter. None of the analogies will do it justice. We're post-identity anyway. Just see if the vibe is right for you. We hope you get something out of it!   If you want to help me get setup sooner/faster in a totally gratuitous way, or support me but you don't care about the subscription or want to bother with the monthly stuff, here is a way to buy me something concrete and immediately useful, then you can buy me important equipment for my office on this list (these items will be automatically shipped to my address if you use the list here) https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2MAWFYUJQIM58?   Buy me some coffee: https://www.venmo.com/u/Theorypleeb https://paypal.me/theorypleeb   If Theory Underground has helped you see that text-to-speech technologies are a useful way of supplementing one's reading while living a busy life, if you want to be able to listen to PDFs for yourself, then Speechify is recommended. Use the link below and Theory Underground gets credit! https://share.speechify.com/mzwBHEB Follow Theory Underground on Duolingo: https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKTP747NSNMAOYEI See Theory Underground memes here: https://www.instagram.com/theory_underground/ https://tiktok.com/@theory_underground   Missed a course at Theory Underground? Wrong! Courses at Theory Underground are available after the fact on demand. https://theoryunderground.com/courses   MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk            

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When the pandemic hit and a lot of people started working from home, many digital signage CMS software companies started developing and releasing solutions that pushed the digital signage messaging more normally posted on screens around workplaces to the laptop and computer monitor screens in the formal or ad hoc workspaces created around houses and apartments. It was a new but necessary feature for most companies, but something the Dutch company Netpresenter has been doing for almost 30 years. The software company started out with that problem in mind, borrowing on the concept of screensavers to create what it calls desktop digital signage. Over time, it added more conventional digital signage capabilities for workplaces - a solution that founder Frank Hoen says is not an add-on, but as robust as the many, many, many other CMS options out there. Along with offering a lot of integrations with business systems like SharePoint, the Netpresenter platform is very deep when it comes to triggered alerts for things like emergencies. That was developed in the wake of 9/11, when Netpresenter's US office in the World Trade Center complex was lost in the terror attack. Netpresenter has more than 5 million active users globally, from SMB to huge multi-nationals and government agencies that see screens on desktops and walls as the most effective way to reach and update its workers. While most of that footprint is desktop digital signage, Hoen says at least five percent of Netpresenter's software licenses are being used for conventional digital signage in workplaces. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Frank, thank you for joining me. I have been aware of Netpresenter for the longest time, but we've never actually chatted, and it's interesting that you're one of the oldest companies out there but not terribly well known. Frank Hoen: We're all over the United States. We have hospitals like George Washington Memorial Hospital and big hospital chains across the US, for example, oil refineries in the Middle East, and military installations. There is just a lot of oil, a lot of industries, and a lot of offices across the globe that use our software, and it's been a while, so we have a couple of very interesting customers.  One of the very earliest ones was the US Space Command, I believe, in 1995. Can you imagine that? Those were the days of PointCast, and everybody was saying it was the next big thing.  I remember PointCast.  Frank Hoen: Which was a dragon of a piece of software. It was terrible.  Sucked all the bandwidth!  Frank Hoen: Yeah, and it is interesting because, actually, the beginnings of Netpresenter could be traced back to the fact that we were selling one of the big brands of signage out there. I can tell you it was a Scala, Commodore Amiga, which was expensive as hell. They tried to bridge TV to the PC, and well, you know, they weren't that successful. Windows was not very multimedia-oriented then, and it didn't go that well, in the beginning, at least.  We saw that, and we didn't want to build a signage solution or compete with them, but what we did see is that for the first time, all these computers out there with screens, which were managed, which were there, were available, and they were interconnected, and so you start to experiment. You put some images and videos on the server, and then the server comes down because of all the bandwidth. So we introduced some smart caching, and voila, Netpresenter was born.  It was kind of an interesting beginning, but big companies like Nokia, Sony, and the early pioneers picked up on it, and one of our early customers was actually a US Space Command. And so I literally started going to the trade show. I came across a Marine who was in this battle group who used Netpresenter, and I never heard of the people. I didn't know they were using it. They might have copied it from one Navy server to other ships, but what can you do? It's a nice story now.  So you have interesting roots in that since COVID became a thing, the pandemic bubbled up, and a lot of people were working from home. A lot of “conventional” or “mainstream” digital signage companies branched into making effective screensavers, pushing information to desktops for work-from-home people. You, on the flip side, started as a corporate screensaver company that then evolved and expanded into doing digital signage as well, correct?  Frank Hoen: Well, yes, and if I may add, and taking it a bit back from COVID, we had an office in Twin Towers, and when obviously that happened, and all the people who I knew had died, we were like, could we have actually maybe contributed in a positive way and then trying to prevent when something similar happens to be able to save more people? And that was the beginning of what we call our Emergency Alert Capability of Netpresenter.  So, sir, you had an office in the World Trade Center? Frank Hoen: Yes. Wow.  Frank Hoen: So, that was one of those pivotal moments. Obviously, COVID was as well, and I'll get back to that. But, imagine this, there, and suddenly boom, and it was, yeah, obviously terrible. But it was for us. We were like, let's introduce emergency alerts in our platform so that our customers can actually use this for emergency evacuations, fire, aiding and fire alerts, giving specific information, active shooter, tornado warnings, and the software has been with us since then, basically, and to this day, many us hospitals actually use our software for that specifically as well, for example.  Still, we have whole countries that are actually running the Netpresenter software, including the screens, all these tools, apps, and push notifications. This is a full omnichannel emergency alert system capable of serving whole countries. They're running software. So if people are buying, and that's my point, if people are buying Netpresenter, they're buying something that literally whole countries depend on to address millions and millions immediately. So, we have seen quite a few copycats over the years, and I always felt, and so our developers, they had a very high shareware component in there. It was kind of like hack on the hack. Obviously, then those, what we have very often seen is people start off with that because they have rock bottom prices, obviously, because they can't compete on features. Still, eventually, those customers end up at us.  If you need to run on corporate devices, mobile devices, PCs, and all these things and networks. The last thing you want is for that piece of software to be installed, which kills your bandwidth and causes all kinds of problems. There are big organizations, especially in hospitals and other places, that they choose for quality, and that means. You know, we're not the cheapest solution out there, most expensive either, but we've had many customers for 20-plus years. What IT company can say that?  Not a lot. So, when you're asked to describe your company, do you say you're a digital signage software company or something else? Frank Hoen: We're into corporate communications. Basically, this is a corporate communication platform. We do say that we have signage for the big screens, desktop digital signage for all existing PCs, app solutions, alerts, notifications, tickers, and all kinds of tools, basically any device in the organization. I always use the parallel of a hospital. There are big screens hanging there. We provide those; we run on those. There's all the PCs, we run on those. We run on the tablets. We run on mobile devices. There's the alert notification as well. The whole thing integrates with things already available. In organizations such as SharePoint integrations, that's not many organizations that offer that. So basically, organizations invest a lot in their intranets in their SharePoints and similar intranets, but predominantly SharePoint if organizations have Windows, but very few people are seeing the content. So that's problematic. There's a saying it's difficult to be famous if nobody recognizes you, and it's essentially here we are, they have invested a lot of money in that. So obviously, things like signage solutions, big screens, and being able to distill headlines literally, need-to-know, must-know information from intranets, that's a killer app that really is bringing the most elegant way and big heritage of push that's bringing content, throughout organizations, fully automated, and that's just beautiful because number one: organizations, they are popularizing the internet, but number two: they're the headlines of what organizations should know, everybody sees them, and that's just very cool. Your website says you have about 5 million active users. I assume a pretty high percentage of that is desktop digital signage, as you describe it. What percentage would you attribute to the larger screens sprinkled around an office building?  Frank Hoen: Well, it's actually relatively high—I would say somewhere between 5% and 10%—and it's significant. So you got a pretty big footprint out there.  Frank Hoen: Yeah, and the interesting thing is that we have customers who pay per annum or per month. The rule is, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. So if customers are happy and you keep adding relevant new features, they stay.  Well, if you've had customers for 20 years, that's a pretty good endorsement. Frank Hoen: Yeah, and that actually brings in the fact that IT revolutions come and go, and listening very carefully to your customers and then working from there, for example, integrating AI, obviously is omnipresent. That is crucial if you want to survive as an organization, whether you're in the signage or not. So I'm working for an organization that's using Netpresenter. I'm, let's say, working remotely. How does your product manifest itself on screens?  Frank Hoen: We use a couple of concepts. Basically, we don't want to be intrusive, so we do have pop-ups. However, I don't like the concept of pop-ups and things like that unless it's in your best interest that you should be immediately notified about something. So we have that, but that's not a mainstream tool.  The mainstream tool is the desktop app, and we have an app that is for mobile devices that's basically an elegant reader where you can command, and things like that, kind of a smart social internet dish, and that can actually is typically often connected with a SharePoint. So it gets automated feeds, but the key component is actually, the home is the desktop signage, desktop digital signage. That is the good old screensaver. Obviously, screens don't burn in anymore, but the elegance of these new flat screens is basically that the difference between sleep mode and active mode isn't that big.  Imagine walking through an organization, and every screen, every of those PCs displays the latest information and the latest headlines from your intranet automatically. You get so many impressions of the message. Then we actually measured that you can actually increase intranet, free fault, but more importantly, the retention to two and a half. So literally, a well-used intranet introduced Netpresenter, and a lot more people recall the key messages, and that's just beautiful. It elegantly brings without interrupting people in the core processes. We obviously want to give management from organizations a fighting chance of reaching their staff.  So if I'm banging away on emails and there's some sort of message that Corporate needs to get out to its staff, what's going to happen on my screen?  Frank Hoen: We have different levels of notifications. So you have a low, medium, and high level of notifications, and we can literally take over your whole screen if necessary. Think active shooters and things like that We call it an emergency alert, similar to the public emergency broadcast. You get lower levels than that. You have partial screens; you have pop-up notifications. We can do things on your mobile device as well. If you're constantly hammering on your PC, the screens won't disappear. So there are all kinds of forms, and basically, remember old McLuhan, “the medium is the message.”  If you have a big toolbox, you don't only have the hammer, if you know what I mean. So you have a lot more tools available at home, but the key tool is still the screensaver.  I'm going to assume having done this for so many years that you have a pretty good sense of the balance that you have to strike. You mentioned the word intrusive before. You can cross that line, I suspect, pretty easily and just start annoying your staff as opposed to educating them and making them aware.  Frank Hoen: You know, obviously, we both agree that people don't consider a signage screen intrusive. It's just there. It's the same with a screensaver; it's there when you're not actively hammering away at emails. You know, you grab a cup of coffee, take a rest break, and turn to the computer, you will see it several times a day, but it never is intrusive because, you know, it's there with your lock screen as well and we have solutions for that as well. So, basically, when you're returning to your computer or not using it for a couple of minutes, we're there on whatever screen that is out there. And are those configurable at the user end, or is that something that's set centrally?  Frank Hoen: The user has some capabilities, but most of them, obviously, you want to ensure that you have some control over internal communications. For example, the screens that won't appear when you're doing a presentation or having a team meeting wouldn't make much sense so you do have control over that, but the organization can determine which tools they use or which mixture of tools they're going to use.  I assume there's a percentage of people who don't want to be bothered and would be looking for ways to disable the application. How do you fight that?  Frank Hoen: That is easily done, of course, through configuring your PC. If it's an office PC, it's easy to do, but you know, I should state that it's ridiculous the amount of time people at work spend on their social media. It's getting crazy, and it's literally two hours or more at work. And it's just not being able as an organization actually to have access, even simple access, to your staff. That's what we're talking about. So we're giving them back a little fighting chance. We're never going to be able to compete one-on-one against social media and all their algorithms and elegant persuasion mechanisms but with Netpresenter, you have a fighting chance of getting your need-to-know information, your must-know information well, between the years of employees, basically.  How do they know it's that much time on social media? Is that IT department just looking at browser activity?  Frank Hoen: Oh, no, these are studies. That's easily googled. There are several big studies out there, and it's what I see here is from Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023. It basically says that employees are disengaging. They want more recognition for their work, more communication from the leaders, more communication from the leaders, clear goals, stronger guidance, and engagement or culture. How do you do that when working at home? So, how do you actually get culture across while working predominantly at home? Many employees experience stress often because of social media. They already overworked well before entering the office, so basically, there are a lot of studies out there. If you want to have the chance to keep connecting with your employees, your communication platform needs to be adapted to that so that you don't add to the information overload but basically bring some peace and quiet.  But if you cannot reach your staff while working at home, you will lose out. There will be no connection at all at your organization.  How much of this is integrated into other business systems? You mentioned SharePoint before, but you know, companies use Slack and so on.  Frank Hoen: Yeah. We also have Teams connections, for example, and several other connections. Basically, if you have the data, we'll be able to intelligently deliver it to the screens.  We're even able to analyze how much of that was read and understood through AI, through smart AI solutions. So imagine letting AI summarize the key headlines your staff or your management wants employees to know. AI literally analyzes it, compacts it, makes an abstract out of it, puts it out to the screens, and then actually keeps an eye on it, does small polls, two—or three-question polls, and checks whether they have understood it.  So basically, we're seeing now the move from isolated tools or very smart apps into integrated systems, which are basically working like the director of a big news broadcaster. When information comes in, they determine: is it breaking news? Is it news for the app? Is it news on TV? Is it news just for a website? Is it no news? So you have our AI analyzing information, then deciding whether it will be how important it is, putting it out there on the right spot and on the right medium, but also, and that's really new, it can actually detect among these thousands of employees, we actually typically see that on big signage screens or on the screen savers. It can actually detect if they understood it, if they know the basics of, for example, cybersecurity awareness or compliance, and that's really cool. Basically we're bringing signage into massive learning systems without being intrusive, and to elegantly pull, if they know it, not everyone, just a couple and just enough, so, you know, okay, now we need to snooze this campaign that now we need to snooze this campaign or now we need to upscale the campaign and show it more on screens more frequently or maybe even on other channels as well.  So that's awareness. Can you do training?  Frank Hoen: Well, you know, it's not full-blown training in that you're sitting and having your course on C programming. No, it doesn't do that.  This is meant for relatively small pieces of information, not whole ISO manuals or full compliance manuals. Still, the essence of the things the organization has identified is that nobody knows but they should. So, you need to know that those crucial pieces of information are crucial; you can put that in there. It can actually detect if the employees have read it, if they understood it, and it then can report back to management and say, “Hey, you know, did you know that your organization was 85% aware of the basic rules of cybersecurity awareness? It has gone down to 65%. As an AI, upon your instruction, I've decided to show more messages and cybersecurity awareness, and I'm happy to report that after two weeks, 95% of everybody knows cybersecurity awareness.”  So yeah, it's basically bringing signage into the big world where because of all these PCs out there, added real estate screen, real estate is literally football fields more than the screens you have typically hanging out there if you're only using big screens.  Right, and the screens themselves are physically bigger. As I'm chatting with you, I forgot the size of this curved screen thing I have here, but I could have a screensaver on one side and have a big desktop going anyway.  Frank Hoen: Exactly, and basically, you can imagine how big of a screen it is while you are hammering away on emails, but while you're still working in the office or environment, you literally can see the screens to the corners of your eyes or colleagues, or when you walk through the canteen, it's basically, it's everywhere. Your messages are omnipresent because you literally use every screen in your organization.  So if I'm using this solution, is it a license that I buy, do I subscribe, or is it a bit of both?  Frank Hoen: We have on-premise customers that's our current form, and that's preferred by, for example, defense and some of the large organizations, but we also have a new cloud platform, and that's license-based, so we have all variations of licensing.  I assume the cloud side is pretty much essential for the work-from-home crowd. Frank Hoen: Yeah. Although, actually, if they just installed it on their servers, then obviously the organization and the people have access to VPNs, and then it would be available as well. So it's that flexibility, which is really nice because some current customers don't need advanced AI integrations and things like that. However, they still want to be able to convey messages on their PC and rhe desktop digital signage, the alerts, that's all in there, and if they want the more advanced integrations with SharePoint, AI, and learning through signage screens, then they need to move to the Netpresenter Cloud. Workplace has become a very hot vertical in digital signage. What was your reaction during the COVID era when all kinds of digital signage CMS software companies added some variation on corporate screensavers, desktops, and digital signage to their product suite?  Frank Hoen: We saw plenty of them, and most of them were just one of them. “We have those kinds of features-ish” types of companies. There have been no further developments. Some have been limited to an announcement or very basic functionality. It's very easy to hack a browser module, display something on it, and wrap it in there. Still, it's much more difficult to have a full-blown, reliable system that integrates with all back offices and middleware applications. So, basically, it brings back vibes from the shareware days of some competitors. Unless you're committed to developing, keeping it secure, adding new features, making sure it's not an island, it's not something I would advise big organizations to invest in because, basically, it's just a side note for those organizations,  Yeah. When you're talking, I was thinking it's the difference between a company saying, yeah, we can do that versus another company like you're saying, this is what we do.  Frank Hoen: Exactly. It's the same with signage. Everybody can connect a big screen to PowerPoint. That's not signage. That's like the Nike network and USB sticks. That's not signage. Well, I don't consider that signage, and it still is a thing. If organizations would simply calculate the total cost of ownership of the applications, which includes support, which includes messy things with drivers or special PC configurations and things like that, you don't have that when that with Netpresenter, you know, it has for 25 years, it had to run on anything out there, anything, and while being elegant in terms of PC resources and a network resource. With that much experience, no other competitor comes even close there.  Sometimes, when a solution is focused on one thing, the other stuff it does isn't as robust as a pure-play digital signage CMS. How would you answer that? Frank Hoen: We have an extremely robust CMS. Technically, it doesn't matter whether our signage is running on the desktop or big screen. It's even more difficult to run on a computer with dozens of applications open, and then we need to run reliably. Being able to run on those computer environments is so extreme, which means that Netpresenter software needs to be incredibly robust. So, I would argue that in terms of CMS, nobody can teach us lessons there.  Again, whole countries use our software—the original Netpresenter software—and you would use it in your organization. They literally run it too; for example, we had a system a couple of years ago in the Netherlands that was addressing 50,000 public screens and millions of apps, and if you're able to do emergency public broadcast on such a massive scale and reliably run every day on millions of desktop computers abused by users every day, basically, that says something.  Tell me about the company. How big are you?  Frank Hoen: Truth be told, we're a relatively small organization. There was a very deliberate strategy never to go to the stock exchange or attract investor's money, it was never necessary. We kept growing and have been profitable for 25 years in a row. We're very comfortable financially, very secure, and very robust.  But yeah, I have a lot of friends. They did try to go to the stock exchange in the US, and some made it, but most didn't. So there are many organizations we see in our area that are just going bust trying to collect the big check on the stock exchange or investors becoming impatient and are downscaling. It's terrible, and it's killing the industry, and again, what kind of organization would you prefer? Are you entirely self-funded, then?  Frank Hoen: Oh yeah.  So it's your company? Frank Hoen: It's my company.  And how do you sell? Do you go through channel or direct?  Frank Hoen: Both, and there's a big opportunity for any of your listeners in the SharePoint or corporate world to connect with us for free. There's a big opportunity because how are you going to distinguish yourself from all these other internet integrators?  So there's that. So we work through these integrators and there's direct sales as well for, if organizations are of such a scale that it becomes more comfortable to do so. So, last question, what might we see over the next year or so from Netpresenter?  Frank Hoen: Every new technology brings new capabilities, including the omnipresent AI and smart learning through signage, and that is our big focus right now. We want to be able to literally prove to management that through signage on your desktop and on the big screens, you can guarantee that your employees have seen and understood it. That's going to be our year.  Yeah. I mean, that's made a big difference to the digital out of home community, the analytics and proof of view, and so on. So it makes sense that if you're going to make that investment in the enterprise, in the workplace, it'd be great if you actually knew it was working. Frank Hoen: It's not just about counting views. That's not it. Imagine a piece of information comes on and is conveyed on signage, and a small part of the organization receives polls to answer a pop-up, for example, very small, as little as possible, and they're actually being asked if they understood the question. So it's not about counting views. It's much more than that.  Gotcha. All right, Frank, thank you so much for your time.  Frank Hoen: Thank you, Dave. It's been very nice. 

Welcome back to Young Hot Guys! This week we have an Easter-themed special episode! Killian also gives a lecture on McLuhan's theory that the medium is the message, and the guys chat about Pompeii and boiled eggs. It's a good one. Shane Daniel Byrne, Tony Cantwell, and Killian Sundermann are Young Hot Guys. This episode is sponsored by The Samaritans, go to Listening.ie for further information. This is a HeadStuff podcast produced by Hilary Barry. Artwork by Shane Kenna Email us at YHG@HeadStuff.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Poulos joins Donald to talk about Tocqueville, McLuhan, Orthodoxy, and "the digital politics of spiritual war." James Poulos helps advance enterprises impacting American life in technological, spiritual, and political ways. He is the co-founder and editor of The American Mind at the Claremont Institute, the founder and editorial director of RETURN, acquired by Blaze Media, and the host of Zero Hour at BlazeTV. He is the author of The Art of Being Free, Human Forever, and the forthcoming Pink Police State. Over nearly twenty years as a prolific writer, his columns and essays have been featured in publications spanning the spectrum of mainstream and independent media. He has appeared on numerous audio and video programs and regularly addresses domestic and international audiences. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Political Theory from Georgetown University, both with distinction. He lives in Los Angeles. Links: The American Mind: americanmind.org RETURN: blazemedia.com/return Zero Hour: https://www.theblaze.com/podcasts/zero-hour-with-james-poulos Human Forever: https://canonic.xyz/p/1YV9yExbmJ9mgBXNM81TouJuDtqxH2PpL @‌jamepoulos on Twitter

Andrew McLuhan, the grandson of Marshall McLuhan and the Director of the McLuhan Institute Topic: the state of the media today; Marshall McLuhan's prophesies today Article: https://www.thefp.com/p/the-prophets-marshall-mcluhan Website: https://themcluhaninstitute.com/ Social Media: https://twitter.com/amicusadastra https://www.facebook.com/McLuhanInstitute/ https://www.instagram.com/mcinstatute/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've made this one public so you can get a taste of what's going on behind the scenes at Theory Underground. Critical Media Theory (CMT) (on the 2nd Sunday of every month 9:00 AM Pacific / 12:00 PM Eastern) may be the most popular and cutting edge field/subject-matter at TU. It's about what we all have in common: Devices that mediate our sensory experience, filter existence, and structure our habits. The McKerracher-Snelgrove synthesis (Dave and Ann) bring a unique teaching approach that combines thinkers such as Marx, McLuhan, Heidegger, Arendt, Baudrillard, Lacan, Ellul, Virilio, Steigler, with popular bestsellers on the topics of smartphone distraction, social media addiction, and more. Through these lecture sessions, the monthly practical experiment/assignments, and presentation/publishing opportunities, students of CMT are able to develop themselves as researchers who are co-pioneering the most relevant field of the most mediated century known to humankind.   ABOUT / CREDITS / LINKS   How to get involved with weekly, monthly, or once-in-a-lifetime events (including the lecture series you watched here!) https://docs.google.com/document/d/19pOkceYZGixxcrPcJBv3uzdG3IevZ1ApX1vDi7YpQnY/edit?usp=sharing   Become a monthly TU Tier Subscriber to access past, ongoing, and upcoming courses, special events, office hours, clubs, and critical feedback that will help you evolve your comprehension capacities and critical faculties, via the website here: https://theoryunderground.com/product/tu-subscription-tiers/   Don't have time for that but want to help anyway? Consider supporting the patreon here: Welcome to Theory Underground. https://www.patreon.com/TheoryUnderground   Get the books at a discount: https://theoryunderground.com/publications   Theory Underground is a theory lecture-course centered platform and publishing house. If you want to better understand yourself and the world by asking the hardest questions, wrestling with the most complex problems, and reading the greatest thinkers in the history of philosophy and theory, then welcome. Theory Underground is by and for working class intellectuals, renegade academics, and adults who don't belong or see a future in anything on offer. Think of Theory Underground like a Jiu Jitsu gym for your brain. Or like a post left theory church. It doesn't matter. None of the analogies will do it justice. We're post-identity anyway. Just see if the vibe is right for you. We hope you get something out of it!   If you want to help me get setup sooner/faster in a totally gratuitous way, or support me but you don't care about the subscription or want to bother with the monthly stuff, here is a way to buy me something concrete and immediately useful, then you can buy me important equipment for my office on this list (these items will be automatically shipped to my address if you use the list here) https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2MAWFYUJQIM58?   Buy me some coffee: https://www.venmo.com/u/Theorypleeb https://paypal.me/theorypleeb Or become a monthly subscriber at        

Episode 118 features Katherine Silva, who is a published author, an editor-in-chief of a small press, who writes horror but with a mix of grief and existentialism, as opposed to just slash'em and bash'em. We talk about writing, getting into horror, living in Maine, process, online communities, Anthony Bourdain, the DIY nature of indies, being workaholics, lists, balance, and much much more… Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode KatherineSilvaAuthor.com AgentPalmer.com Tweets @KatherineSilva_ @AgentPalmer @ThePalmerFiles Other Links A Perfect Pairing of Extraordinary Canadians, McLuhan and Coupland NASCAR: Full Speed is Fast Fun but Will Never Pass Drive to Survive   You can also hear more Palmer occasionally on Our Liner Notes, a musical conversation podcast with host Chris Maier or as co-host of The Podcast Digest with Dan Lizette. Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions. --End Show Notes Transmission--

McLuhan fue el filósofo más importante para las ciencias de la información y los nuevos ecosistemas de medios. Mediante sus análisis especulativos y sus métodos, como la tétrada pudo vislumbrar las consecuencias sociales que las nuevas tecnologías iban a tener. Un pódcast ideal para tiempos de Apple Vision pro.

Keyboardist/Songwriter Releases His Legacy Album: "Kentucky"#keyboardist #songwriter #legacy #kentucky #newmusic The new album by Neal Rosner titled “Kentucky” chronicles the artist's 12-year residency in Madisonville, KY. Songs were written between 1972 -2023. Engineered by Steve Baker, a small studio with a big heart, the album is divided into 2 parts: Plain (secular) and With Peanut (semi- religious).Neal plays keyboards, some percussion and vocals. Some terrific local musicians are featured on the album like guitarists Boscoe France, Alonzo Pennington.Says Neal, “I especially like doing the harmonies. When you sing with yourself you often have a good vocal blend.”Website: https://mcluhan.band/To purchase: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CK8CGRYB/ref=sr_1_1For more information:https://www.facebook.com/neal.rosnerhttps://open.spotify.com/album/3TDLktKAlUvphAwkB5Ldaw?si=ie7sNzJXTy6s42MVwHB-Dwhttps://open.spotify.com/artist/2sj64LA4PMI90RuUyH5IYc?si=5FYAZGLzQGy-P8uOIbulrQhttps://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lavh-KwdOiU1qFSmihYvZtOpwLuY-tgTg&si=gjDQSwHHI-GaEErsThanks for tuning in, please be sure to click that subscribe button and give this a thumbs up!!Email: thevibesbroadcast@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/listen_to_the_vibes_/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thevibesbroadcastnetworkLinktree: https://linktr.ee/the_vibes_broadcastTikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeuTVRv2/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheVibesBrdcstTruth: https://truthsocial.com/@KoyoteFor all our social media and other links, go to: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/the_vibes_broadcastPlease subscribe, like, and share!

Deep dive discussing Marshall McLuhan's idea of, "The medium is the message" with Dr. Aiden Hirshfield, Media Psychologist, Researcher, Tech Consultant and host of Media Psyched.

Chapter 1 What's Understanding Media Book by Marshall McLuhanUnderstanding Media: The Extensions of Man is a seminal work by Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher, professor, and media theorist. Published in 1964, the book explores the deep and profound impact of media on human communication and culture.McLuhan introduces the concept of "media extensions" to explain how various technologies, from the printing press to the telegraph and radio, have extended and transformed human sensory perception, cognition, and social organization. He argues that media are not just passive tools, but powerful agents that shape our perception, behavior, and understanding of the world.McLuhan proposes the famous aphorism "the medium is the message," suggesting that the medium itself has a more significant impact on society than the content it carries. He believes that each medium has its unique characteristics, such as the ability to compress or amplify information, and these qualities shape our experience and perception of reality.The book covers a wide range of topics and explores the effects of media on various aspects of society, including politics, art, education, and advertising. McLuhan argues that different media environments create different types of consciousness, and as we transition from one dominant medium to another, our understanding of the world fundamentally changes.Understanding Media has had a profound influence on media theory and continues to be relevant in the digital age. McLuhan's ideas have been both praised and criticized, but his work remains thought-provoking and influential in understanding the complex relationship between media and society.Chapter 2 Is Understanding Media Book A Good BookYes, "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" by Marshall McLuhan is widely regarded as a seminal book in the field of media studies and has had a significant impact on the understanding of media and communication. McLuhan's theories and ideas about the effects of different media on society and human perception have been highly influential and continue to be relevant in the digital age. Many consider it a must-read for anyone interested in media, technology, and cultural studies.Chapter 3 Understanding Media Book by Marshall McLuhan SummaryUnderstanding Media: The Extensions of Man is a book written by Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan and published in 1964. In this book, McLuhan explores the impact of different media on human perception, culture, and society. He argues that media are not just means of communication but also shape the way we think and perceive the world.One of the central ideas in the book is McLuhan's famous statement, "The medium is the message." He posits that the medium through which a message is transmitted is more important than the content of the message itself. McLuhan argues that different media technologies have distinct characteristics that influence the way we experience information. For example, television is a cool medium that requires active participation from the viewer to fill in the gaps, while print is a hot medium that provides more detailed and specific information.McLuhan also introduces the concept of "global village" in Understanding Media. He suggests that the electronic media, such as television and the internet, have the potential to connect people across geographical boundaries and create a sense of global community. McLuhan predicts that this global village would have profound effects on social, cultural, and political structures.Furthermore, McLuhan examines the impact of media on individual and collective perception. He argues that media are extensions of our senses and enable us to perceive and experience...

2023 has certainly been a year of massive revelations in the world of anomalous research. It is a signifier of the third wave that will change humanity as we know it through the wide spread introduction of AI. We all stand on the praecipes of the new normal transhumanist world. Jay and Aspasia take you on a brief tour of some of those we have lost in the field, ground breaking news stories and the speculative notions of futurists from the past. Happy New Year to all and we will see you in the next one.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4602609/advertisement

Danielle Ezzo is a new media artist pioneering the lossy space of photography through a process of sourcing from the vast digitized open-access archive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This beguiling book animates McLuhan's semiotic principle, the medium is the message, by activating the ability of photography to simultaneously communicate and mediate. Ezzo's rephotographed art objects unleash an open-ended exploration into how history is shaped and its potential to propagate the future. In this conversation, Danielle discusses, among other things:Viewer as curatorNon-linear lookingIntuitive response led by the aesthetics of formal qualitiesFreeing artifacts of origins Subjectivity of documentationCategorization mattersLossinessLetting go of presuppositions (aka prescribed notions)Sensibilities changeHow images circulate nowSky as inspiration and analogous to virtual spaceReimagining artistic communitiesNFT'sEconomics of being an artistSynthetic images Museums' role as cultural arbitersCultural lagNumber Theory

In today's episode of The Metaverse Podcast, we host Andrew McLuhan, director at The McLuhan Institute, and Marshall McLuhan's grandson. Join our host Jamie Burke as he explores how "the medium is the message" applies to AI with Andrew. Whether you're a technologist, media professional, or lifelong learner, tune in to: Explore the ethical and societal implications of rapid technological innovation, focusing on its unforeseen side effects and the need for responsible design. Learn about McLuhan's laws of media, a framework to understand how technologies reshape us personally and socially. Explore the shift from quantity to quality in AI and technology, relating to personal values and societal impact. Learn how digital communities and diverse education impact real-world engagement and offer personal agency. Explore the cognitive and emotional impact of digital vs. traditional media, and discover ways to exercise agency for a balanced life. #ai #mcluhan #media #people #technology #gpt ------------ Whether you're a founder, investor, developer, or just have an interest in the future of the Open Metaverse, we invite you to hear from the people supporting its growth. Outlier Ventures is the Open Metaverse accelerator, helping over 100 Web3 startups a year. You can apply for startup funding here - https://ov.click/pddsbcq122 Questions? Join our community: Discord - https://ov.click/pddssodcq122 Telegram - https://ov.click/pddssotgq122 Twitter - https://ov.click/pddssotwq122 LinkedIn - https://ov.click/pddssoliq122 More - https://ov.click/pddslkq122 For further Open Metaverse content: Listen to The Metaverse Podcast - https://ov.click/pddsmcq122 Sign up for our quarterly live events at - https://ov.click/pddsdfq122 Check out our portfolio - https://ov.click/pddspfq122 Thanks for listening!

How did a hangover in 2015 lead to an award-winning debut graphic novel in 2023? Find out as Peter Rostovsky joins the show to celebrate the release of DAMNATION DIARIES (Uncivilized Books)! We get into the origins of his gorgeously & grotesquely drawn social satire about Hell (& Hell's therapist, Fred Greenberg), what he had to learn about comics in the process of making his first one, how comics allowed him to wed his polemical nature to a deeply personal story, and why his version of Hell bears an awful lot of similarities to life in NYC. We also talk about what it was like emigrating from Russia to the Bronx as a 10-year-old kid in 1980, how comics helped him learn English, his strategies for blending in as a teen, and how he found redemption & maximalism in heavy metal. And we discuss his history in the worlds of fine art, art theory, internet utopianism, and teaching International Art English, the time he broke up a fight between a sculptor and a painter, whether AI is a McLuhan-esque 'prosthesis' for art, his mother's recent death and how he feels about rendering her in Hell in Damnation Diaries, why I think he needs to write about his occasional childhood exile in a garden in the Hermitage, how giving up his solo studio and joining Dean Haspiel & others in Studio CLOACA gave him a community, and more. Follow Peter on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack

Episode one hundred and sixty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “The Weight" by the Band, the Basement Tapes, and the continuing controversy over Dylan going electric. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "S.F. Sorrow is Born" by the Pretty Things. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Also, a one-time request here -- Shawn Taylor, who runs the Facebook group for the podcast and is an old and dear friend of mine, has stage-three lung cancer. I will be hugely grateful to anyone who donates to the GoFundMe for her treatment. Errata At one point I say "when Robertson and Helm travelled to the Brill Building". I meant "when Hawkins and Helm". This is fixed in the transcript but not the recording. Resources There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Bob Dylan and the Band excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two, three. I've used these books for all the episodes involving Dylan: Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which is recommended, as all Wald's books are. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Information on Tiny Tim comes from Eternal Troubadour: The Improbable Life of Tiny Tim by Justin Martell. Information on John Cage comes from The Roaring Silence by David Revill Information on Woodstock comes from Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. For material on the Basement Tapes, I've used Million Dollar Bash by Sid Griffin. And for the Band, I've used This Wheel's on Fire by Levon Helm with Stephen Davis, Testimony by Robbie Robertson, The Band by Craig Harris and Levon by Sandra B Tooze. I've also referred to the documentaries No Direction Home and Once Were Brothers. The complete Basement Tapes can be found on this multi-disc box set, while this double-CD version has the best material from the sessions. All the surviving live recordings by Dylan and the Hawks from 1966 are on this box set. There are various deluxe versions of Music From Big Pink, but still the best way to get the original album is in this twofer CD with the Band's second album. Transcript Just a brief note before I start – literally while I was in the middle of recording this episode, it was announced that Robbie Robertson had died today, aged eighty. Obviously I've not had time to alter the rest of the episode – half of which had already been edited – with that in mind, though I don't believe I say anything disrespectful to his memory. My condolences to those who loved him – he was a huge talent and will be missed. There are people in the world who question the function of criticism. Those people argue that criticism is in many ways parasitic. If critics knew what they were talking about, so the argument goes, they would create themselves, rather than talk about other people's creation. It's a variant of the "those who can't, teach" cliche. And to an extent it's true. Certainly in the world of rock music, which we're talking about in this podcast, most critics are quite staggeringly ignorant of the things they're talking about. Most criticism is ephemeral, published in newspapers, magazines, blogs and podcasts, and forgotten as soon as it has been consumed -- and consumed is the word . But sometimes, just sometimes, a critic will have an effect on the world that is at least as important as that of any of the artists they criticise. One such critic was John Ruskin. Ruskin was one of the preeminent critics of visual art in the Victorian era, particularly specialising in painting and architecture, and he passionately advocated for a form of art that would be truthful, plain, and honest. To Ruskin's mind, many artists of the past, and of his time, drew and painted, not what they saw with their own eyes, but what other people expected them to paint. They replaced true observation of nature with the regurgitation of ever-more-mannered and formalised cliches. His attacks on many great artists were, in essence, the same critiques that are currently brought against AI art apps -- they're just recycling and plagiarising what other people had already done, not seeing with their own eyes and creating from their own vision. Ruskin was an artist himself, but never received much acclaim for his own work. Rather, he advocated for the works of others, like Turner and the pre-Raphaelite school -- the latter of whom were influenced by Ruskin, even as he admired them for seeing with their own vision rather than just repeating influences from others. But those weren't the only people Ruskin influenced. Because any critical project, properly understood, becomes about more than just the art -- as if art is just anything. Ruskin, for example, studied geology, because if you're going to talk about how people should paint landscapes and what those landscapes look like, you need to understand what landscapes really do look like, which means understanding their formation. He understood that art of the kind he wanted could only be produced by certain types of people, and so society had to be organised in a way to produce such people. Some types of societal organisation lead to some kinds of thinking and creation, and to properly, honestly, understand one branch of human thought means at least to attempt to understand all of them. Opinions about art have moral consequences, and morality has political and economic consequences. The inevitable endpoint of any theory of art is, ultimately, a theory of society. And Ruskin had a theory of society, and social organisation. Ruskin's views are too complex to summarise here, but they were a kind of anarcho-primitivist collectivism. He believed that wealth was evil, and that the classical liberal economics of people like Mill was fundamentally anti-human, that the division of labour alienated people from their work. In Ruskin's ideal world, people would gather in communities no bigger than villages, and work as craftspeople, working with nature rather than trying to bend nature to their will. They would be collectives, with none richer or poorer than any other, and working the land without modern technology. in the first half of the twentieth century, in particular, Ruskin's influence was *everywhere*. His writings on art inspired the Impressionist movement, but his political and economic ideas were the most influential, right across the political spectrum. Ruskin's ideas were closest to Christian socialism, and he did indeed inspire many socialist parties -- most of the founders of Britain's Labour Party were admirers of Ruskin and influenced by his ideas, particularly his opposition to the free market. But he inspired many other people -- Gandhi talked about the profound influence that Ruskin had on him, saying in his autobiography that he got three lessons from Ruskin's Unto This Last: "That 1) the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. 2) a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's in as much as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work. 3) a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. The first of these I knew. The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occurred to me. Unto This Last made it clear as daylight for me that the second and third were contained in the first. I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice" Gandhi translated and paraphrased Unto this Last into Gujurati and called the resulting book Sarvodaya (meaning "uplifting all" or "the welfare of all") which he later took as the name of his own political philosophy. But Ruskin also had a more pernicious influence -- it was said in 1930s Germany that he and his friend Thomas Carlyle were "the first National Socialists" -- there's no evidence I know of that Hitler ever read Ruskin, but a *lot* of Nazi rhetoric is implicit in Ruskin's writing, particularly in his opposition to progress (he even opposed the bicycle as being too much inhuman interference with nature), just as much as more admirable philosophies, and he was so widely read in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that there's barely a political movement anywhere that didn't bear his fingerprints. But of course, our focus here is on music. And Ruskin had an influence on that, too. We've talked in several episodes, most recently the one on the Velvet Underground, about John Cage's piece 4'33. What I didn't mention in any of the discussions of that piece -- because I was saving it for here -- is that that piece was premiered at a small concert hall in upstate New York. The hall, the Maverick Concert Hall, was owned and run by the Maverick arts and crafts collective -- a collective that were so called because they were the *second* Ruskinite arts colony in the area, having split off from the Byrdcliffe colony after a dispute between its three founders, all of whom were disciples of Ruskin, and all of whom disagreed violently about how to implement Ruskin's ideas of pacifist all-for-one and one-for-all community. These arts colonies, and others that grew up around them like the Arts Students League were the thriving centre of a Bohemian community -- close enough to New York that you could get there if you needed to, far enough away that you could live out your pastoral fantasies, and artists of all types flocked there -- Pete Seeger met his wife there, and his father-in-law had been one of the stonemasons who helped build the Maverick concert hall. Dozens of artists in all sorts of areas, from Aaron Copland to Edward G Robinson, spent time in these communities, as did Cage. Of course, while these arts and crafts communities had a reputation for Bohemianism and artistic extremism, even radical utopian artists have their limits, and legend has it that the premiere of 4'33 was met with horror and derision, and eventually led to one artist in the audience standing up and calling on the residents of the town around which these artistic colonies had agglomerated: “Good people of Woodstock, let's drive these people out of town.” [Excerpt: The Band, "The Weight"] Ronnie Hawkins was almost born to make music. We heard back in the episode on "Suzie Q" in 2019 about his family and their ties to music. Ronnie's uncle Del was, according to most of the sources on the family, a member of the Sons of the Pioneers -- though as I point out in that episode, his name isn't on any of the official lists of group members, but he might well have performed with them at some point in the early years of the group. And he was definitely a country music bass player, even if he *wasn't* in the most popular country and western group of the thirties and forties. And Del had had two sons, Jerry, who made some minor rockabilly records: [Excerpt: Jerry Hawkins, "Swing, Daddy, Swing"] And Del junior, who as we heard in the "Susie Q" episode became known as Dale Hawkins and made one of the most important rock records of the fifties: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, "Susie Q"] Ronnie Hawkins was around the same age as his cousins, and was in awe of his country-music star uncle. Hawkins later remembered that after his uncle moved to Califormia to become a star “He'd come home for a week or two, driving a brand new Cadillac and wearing brand new clothes and I knew that's what I wanted to be." Though he also remembered “He spent every penny he made on whiskey, and he was divorced because he was running around with all sorts of women. His wife left Arkansas and went to Louisiana.” Hawkins knew that he wanted to be a music star like his uncle, and he started performing at local fairs and other events from the age of eleven, including one performance where he substituted for Hank Williams -- Williams was so drunk that day he couldn't perform, and so his backing band asked volunteers from the audience to get up and sing with them, and Hawkins sang Burl Ives and minstrel-show songs with the band. He said later “Even back then I knew that every important white cat—Al Jolson, Stephen Foster—they all did it by copying blacks. Even Hank Williams learned all the stuff he had from those black cats in Alabama. Elvis Presley copied black music; that's all that Elvis did.” As well as being a performer from an early age, though, Hawkins was also an entrepreneur with an eye for how to make money. From the age of fourteen he started running liquor -- not moonshine, he would always point out, but something far safer. He lived only a few miles from the border between Missouri and Arkansas, and alcohol and tobacco were about half the price in Missouri that they were in Arkansas, so he'd drive across the border, load up on whisky and cigarettes, and drive back and sell them at a profit, which he then used to buy shares in several nightclubs, which he and his bands would perform in in later years. Like every man of his generation, Hawkins had to do six months in the Army, and it was there that he joined his first ever full-time band, the Blackhawks -- so called because his name was Hawkins, and the rest of the group were Black, though Hawkins was white. They got together when the other four members were performing at a club in the area where Hawkins was stationed, and he was so impressed with their music that he jumped on stage and started singing with them. He said later “It sounded like something between the blues and rockabilly. It sort of leaned in both directions at the same time, me being a hayseed and those guys playing a lot funkier." As he put it "I wanted to sound like Bobby ‘Blue' Bland but it came out sounding like Ernest Tubb.” Word got around about the Blackhawks, both that they were a great-sounding rock and roll band and that they were an integrated band at a time when that was extremely unpopular in the southern states, and when Hawkins was discharged from the Army he got a call from Sam Phillips at Sun Records. According to Hawkins a group of the regular Sun session musicians were planning on forming a band, and he was asked to front the band for a hundred dollars a week, but by the time he got there the band had fallen apart. This doesn't precisely line up with anything else I know about Sun, though it perhaps makes sense if Hawkins was being asked to front the band who had variously backed Billy Lee Riley and Jerry Lee Lewis after one of Riley's occasional threats to leave the label. More likely though, he told everyone he knew that he had a deal with Sun but Phillips was unimpressed with the demos he cut there, and Hawkins made up the story to stop himself losing face. One of the session players for Sun, though, Luke Paulman, who played in Conway Twitty's band among others, *was* impressed with Hawkins though, and suggested that they form a band together with Paulman's bass player brother George and piano-playing cousin Pop Jones. The Paulman brothers and Jones also came from Arkansas, but they specifically came from Helena, Arkansas, the town from which King Biscuit Time was broadcast. King Biscuit Time was the most important blues radio show in the US at that time -- a short lunchtime programme which featured live performances from a house band which varied over the years, but which in the 1940s had been led by Sonny Boy Williamson II, and featured Robert Jr. Lockwood, Robert Johnson's stepson, on guiitar: [Excerpt: Sonny Boy Williamson II "Eyesight to the Blind (King Biscuit Time)"] The band also included a drummer, "Peck" Curtis, and that drummer was the biggest inspiration for a young white man from the town named Levon Helm. Helm had first been inspired to make music after seeing Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys play live when Helm was eight, and he had soon taken up first the harmonica, then the guitar, then the drums, becoming excellent at all of them. Even as a child he knew that he didn't want to be a farmer like his family, and that music was, as he put it, "the only way to get off that stinking tractor  and out of that one hundred and five degree heat.” Sonny Boy Williamson and the King Biscuit Boys would perform in the open air in Marvell, Arkansas, where Helm was growing up, on Saturdays, and Helm watched them regularly as a small child, and became particularly interested in the drumming. “As good as the band sounded,” he said later “it seemed that [Peck] was definitely having the most fun. I locked into the drums at that point. Later, I heard Jack Nance, Conway Twitty's drummer, and all the great drummers in Memphis—Jimmy Van Eaton, Al Jackson, and Willie Hall—the Chicago boys (Fred Belew and Clifton James) and the people at Sun Records and Vee-Jay, but most of my style was based on Peck and Sonny Boy—the Delta blues style with the shuffle. Through the years, I've quickened the pace to a more rock-and-roll meter and time frame, but it still bases itself back to Peck, Sonny Boy Williamson, and the King Biscuit Boys.” Helm had played with another band that George Paulman had played in, and he was invited to join the fledgling band Hawkins was putting together, called for the moment the Sun Records Quartet. The group played some of the clubs Hawkins had business connections in, but they had other plans -- Conway Twitty had recently played Toronto, and had told Luke Paulman about how desperate the Canadians were for American rock and roll music. Twitty's agent Harold Kudlets booked the group in to a Toronto club, Le Coq D'Or, and soon the group were alternating between residencies in clubs in the Deep South, where they were just another rockabilly band, albeit one of the better ones, and in Canada, where they became the most popular band in Ontario, and became the nucleus of an entire musical scene -- the same scene from which, a few years later, people like Neil Young would emerge. George Paulman didn't remain long in the group -- he was apparently getting drunk, and also he was a double-bass player, at a time when the electric bass was becoming the in thing. And this is the best place to mention this, but there are several discrepancies in the various accounts of which band members were in Hawkins' band at which times, and who played on what session. They all *broadly* follow the same lines, but none of them are fully reconcilable with each other, and nobody was paying enough attention to lineup shifts in a bar band between 1957 and 1964 to be absolutely certain who was right. I've tried to reconcile the various accounts as far as possible and make a coherent narrative, but some of the details of what follows may be wrong, though the broad strokes are correct. For much of their first period in Ontario, the group had no bass player at all, relying on Jones' piano to fill in the bass parts, and on their first recording, a version of "Bo Diddley", they actually got the club's manager to play bass with them: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins, "Hey Bo Diddley"] That is claimed to be the first rock and roll record made in Canada, though as everyone who has listened to this podcast knows, there's no first anything. It wasn't released as by the Sun Records Quartet though -- the band had presumably realised that that name would make them much less attractive to other labels, and so by this point the Sun Records Quartet had become Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. "Hey Bo Diddley" was released on a small Canadian label and didn't have any success, but the group carried on performing live, travelling back down to Arkansas for a while and getting a new bass player, Lefty Evans, who had been playing in the same pool of musicians as them, having been another Sun session player who had been in Conway Twitty's band, and had written Twitty's "Why Can't I Get Through to You": [Excerpt: Conway Twitty, "Why Can't I Get Through to You"] The band were now popular enough in Canada that they were starting to get heard of in America, and through Kudlets they got a contract with Joe Glaser, a Mafia-connected booking agent who booked them into gigs on the Jersey Shore. As Helm said “Ronnie Hawkins had molded us into the wildest, fiercest, speed-driven bar band in America," and the group were apparently getting larger audiences in New Jersey than Sammy Davis Jr was, even though they hadn't released any records in the US. Or at least, they hadn't released any records in their own name in the US. There's a record on End Records by Rockin' Ronald and the Rebels which is very strongly rumoured to have been the Hawks under another name, though Hawkins always denied that. Have a listen for yourself and see what you think: [Excerpt: Rockin' Ronald and the Rebels, "Kansas City"] End Records, the label that was on, was one of the many record labels set up by George Goldner and distributed by Morris Levy, and when the group did release a record in their home country under their own name, it was on Levy's Roulette Records. An audition for Levy had been set up by Glaser's booking company, and Levy decided that given that Elvis was in the Army, there was a vacancy to be filled and Ronnie Hawkins might just fit the bill. Hawkins signed a contract with Levy, and it doesn't sound like he had much choice in the matter. Helm asked him “How long did you have to sign for?” and Hawkins replied "Life with an option" That said, unlike almost every other artist who interacted with Levy, Hawkins never had a bad word to say about him, at least in public, saying later “I don't care what Morris was supposed to have done, he looked after me and he believed in me. I even lived with him in his million-dollar apartment on the Upper East Side." The first single the group recorded for Roulette, a remake of Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days" retitled "Forty Days", didn't chart, but the follow-up, a version of Young Jessie's "Mary Lou", made number twenty-six on the charts: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Mary Lou"] While that was a cover of a Young Jessie record, the songwriting credits read Hawkins and Magill -- Magill was a pseudonym used by Morris Levy. Levy hoped to make Ronnie Hawkins into a really big star, but hit a snag. This was just the point where the payola scandal had hit and record companies were under criminal investigation for bribing DJs to play their records. This was the main method of promotion that Levy used, and this was so well known that Levy was, for a time, under more scrutiny than anyone. He couldn't risk paying anyone off, and so Hawkins' records didn't get the expected airplay. The group went through some lineup changes, too, bringing in guitarist Fred Carter (with Luke Paulman moving to rhythm and soon leaving altogether)  from Hawkins' cousin Dale's band, and bass player Jimmy Evans. Some sources say that Jones quit around this time, too, though others say he was in the band for  a while longer, and they had two keyboards (the other keyboard being supplied by Stan Szelest. As well as recording Ronnie Hawkins singles, the new lineup of the group also recorded one single with Carter on lead vocals, "My Heart Cries": [Excerpt: Fred Carter, "My Heart Cries"] While the group were now playing more shows in the USA, they were still playing regularly in Canada, and they had developed a huge fanbase there. One of these was a teenage guitarist called Robbie Robertson, who had become fascinated with the band after playing a support slot for them, and had started hanging round, trying to ingratiate himself with the band in the hope of being allowed to join. As he was a teenager, Hawkins thought he might have his finger on the pulse of the youth market, and when Hawkins and Helm travelled to the Brill Building to hear new songs for consideration for their next album, they brought Robertson along to listen to them and give his opinion. Robertson himself ended up contributing two songs to the album, titled Mr. Dynamo. According to Hawkins "we had a little time after the session, so I thought, Well, I'm just gonna put 'em down and see what happens. And they were released. Robbie was the songwriter for words, and Levon was good for arranging, making things fit in and all that stuff. He knew what to do, but he didn't write anything." The two songs in question were "Someone Like You" and "Hey Boba Lou": [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Hey Boba Lou"] While Robertson was the sole writer of the songs, they were credited to Robertson, Hawkins, and Magill -- Morris Levy. As Robertson told the story later, “It's funny, when those songs came out and I got a copy of the album, it had another name on there besides my name for some writer like Morris Levy. So, I said to Ronnie, “There was nobody there writing these songs when I wrote these songs. Who is Morris Levy?” Ronnie just kinda tapped me on the head and said, “There are certain things about this business that you just let go and you don't question.” That was one of my early music industry lessons right there" Robertson desperately wanted to join the Hawks, but initially it was Robertson's bandmate Scott Cushnie who became the first Canadian to join the Hawks. But then when they were in Arkansas, Jimmy Evans decided he wasn't going to go back to Canada. So Hawkins called Robbie Robertson up and made him an offer. Robertson had to come down to Arkansas and get a couple of quick bass lessons from Helm (who could play pretty much every instrument to an acceptable standard, and so was by this point acting as the group's musical director, working out arrangements and leading them in rehearsals). Then Hawkins and Helm had to be elsewhere for a few weeks. If, when they got back, Robertson was good enough on bass, he had the job. If not, he didn't. Robertson accepted, but he nearly didn't get the gig after all. The place Hawkins and Helm had to be was Britain, where they were going to be promoting their latest single on Boy Meets Girls, the Jack Good TV series with Marty Wilde, which featured guitarist Joe Brown in the backing band: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, “Savage”] This was the same series that Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent were regularly appearing on, and while they didn't appear on the episodes that Hawkins and Helm appeared on, they did appear on the episodes immediately before Hawkins and Helm's two appearances, and again a couple of weeks after, and were friendly with the musicians who did play with Hawkins and Helm, and apparently they all jammed together a few times. Hawkins was impressed enough with Joe Brown -- who at the time was considered the best guitarist on the British scene -- that he invited Brown to become a Hawk. Presumably if Brown had taken him up on the offer, he would have taken the spot that ended up being Robertson's, but Brown turned him down -- a decision he apparently later regretted. Robbie Robertson was now a Hawk, and he and Helm formed an immediate bond. As Helm much later put it, "It was me and Robbie against the world. Our mission, as we saw it, was to put together the best band in history". As rockabilly was by this point passe, Levy tried converting Hawkins into a folk artist, to see if he could get some of the Kingston Trio's audience. He recorded a protest song, "The Ballad of Caryl Chessman", protesting the then-forthcoming execution of Chessman (one of only a handful of people to be executed in the US in recent decades for non-lethal offences), and he made an album of folk tunes, The Folk Ballads of Ronnie Hawkins, which largely consisted of solo acoustic recordings, plus a handful of left-over Hawks recordings from a year or so earlier. That wasn't a success, but they also tried a follow-up, having Hawkins go country and do an album of Hank Williams songs, recorded in Nashville at Owen Bradley's Quonset hut. While many of the musicians on the album were Nashville A-Team players, Hawkins also insisted on having his own band members perform, much to the disgust of the producer, and so it's likely (not certain, because there seem to be various disagreements about what was recorded when) that that album features the first studio recordings with Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson playing together: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Your Cheatin' Heart"] Other sources claim that the only Hawk allowed to play on the album sessions was Helm, and that the rest of the musicians on the album were Harold Bradley and Hank Garland on guitar, Owen Bradley and Floyd Cramer on piano, Bob Moore on bass, and the Anita Kerr singers. I tend to trust Helm's recollection that the Hawks played at least some of the instruments though, because the source claiming that also seems to confuse the Hank Williams and Folk Ballads albums, and because I don't hear two pianos on the album. On the other hand, that *does* sound like Floyd Cramer on piano, and the tik-tok bass sound you'd get from having Harold Bradley play a baritone guitar while Bob Moore played a bass. So my best guess is that these sessions were like the Elvis sessions around the same time and with several of the same musicians, where Elvis' own backing musicians played rhythm parts but left the prominent instruments to the A-team players. Helm was singularly unimpressed with the experience of recording in Nashville. His strongest memory of the sessions was of another session going on in the same studio complex at the time -- Bobby "Blue" Bland was recording his classic single "Turn On Your Love Light", with the great drummer Jabo Starks on drums, and Helm was more interested in listening to that than he was in the music they were playing: [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn On Your Love Light"] Incidentally, Helm talks about that recording being made "downstairs" from where the Hawks were recording, but also says that they were recording in Bradley's Quonset hut.  Now, my understanding here *could* be very wrong -- I've been unable to find a plan or schematic anywhere -- but my understanding is that the Quonset hut was a single-level structure, not a multi-level structure. BUT the original recording facilities run by the Bradley brothers were in Owen Bradley's basement, before they moved into the larger Quonset hut facility in the back, so it's possible that Bland was recording that in the old basement studio. If so, that won't be the last recording made in a basement we hear this episode... Fred Carter decided during the Nashville sessions that he was going to leave the Hawks. As his son told the story: "Dad had discovered the session musicians there. He had no idea that you could play and make a living playing in studios and sleep in your own bed every night. By that point in his life, he'd already been gone from home and constantly on the road and in the service playing music for ten years so that appealed to him greatly. And Levon asked him, he said, “If you're gonna leave, Fred, I'd like you to get young Robbie over here up to speed on guitar”…[Robbie] got kind of aggravated with him—and Dad didn't say this with any malice—but by the end of that week, or whatever it was, Robbie made some kind of comment about “One day I'm gonna cut you.” And Dad said, “Well, if that's how you think about it, the lessons are over.” " (For those who don't know, a musician "cutting" another one is playing better than them, so much better that the worse musician has to concede defeat. For the remainder of Carter's notice in the Hawks, he played with his back to Robertson, refusing to look at him. Carter leaving the group caused some more shuffling of roles. For a while, Levon Helm -- who Hawkins always said was the best lead guitar player he ever worked with as well as the best drummer -- tried playing lead guitar while Robertson played rhythm and another member, Rebel Payne, played bass, but they couldn't find a drummer to replace Helm, who moved back onto the drums. Then they brought in Roy Buchanan, another guitarist who had been playing with Dale Hawkins, having started out playing with Johnny Otis' band. But Buchanan didn't fit with Hawkins' personality, and he quit after a few months, going off to record his own first solo record: [Excerpt: Roy Buchanan, "Mule Train Stomp"] Eventually they solved the lineup problem by having Robertson -- by this point an accomplished lead player --- move to lead guitar and bringing in a new rhythm player, another Canadian teenager named Rick Danko, who had originally been a lead player (and who also played mandolin and fiddle). Danko wasn't expected to stay on rhythm long though -- Rebel Payne was drinking a lot and missing being at home when he was out on the road, so Danko was brought in on the understanding that he was to learn Payne's bass parts and switch to bass when Payne quit. Helm and Robertson were unsure about Danko, and Robertson expressed that doubt, saying "He only knows four chords," to which Hawkins replied, "That's all right son. You can teach him four more the way we had to teach you." He proved himself by sheer hard work. As Hawkins put it “He practiced so much that his arms swoll up. He was hurting.” By the time Danko switched to bass, the group also had a baritone sax player, Jerry Penfound, which allowed the group to play more of the soul and R&B material that Helm and Robertson favoured, though Hawkins wasn't keen. This new lineup of the group (which also had Stan Szelest on piano) recorded Hawkins' next album. This one was produced by Henry Glover, the great record producer, songwriter, and trumpet player who had played with Lucky Millinder, produced Wynonie Harris, Hank Ballard, and Moon Mullican, and wrote "Drowning in My Own Tears", "The Peppermint Twist", and "California Sun". Glover was massively impressed with the band, especially Helm (with whom he would remain friends for the rest of his life) and set aside some studio time for them to cut some tracks without Hawkins, to be used as album filler, including a version of the Bobby "Blue" Bland song "Farther On Up the Road" with Helm on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Levon Helm and the Hawks, "Farther On Up the Road"] There were more changes on the way though. Stan Szelest was about to leave the band, and Jones had already left, so the group had no keyboard player. Hawkins had just the replacement for Szelest -- yet another Canadian teenager. This one was Richard Manuel, who played piano and sang in a band called The Rockin' Revols. Manuel was not the greatest piano player around -- he was an adequate player for simple rockabilly and R&B stuff, but hardly a virtuoso -- but he was an incredible singer, able to do a version of "Georgia on My Mind" which rivalled Ray Charles, and Hawkins had booked the Revols into his own small circuit of clubs around Arkanasas after being impressed with them on the same bill as the Hawks a couple of times. Hawkins wanted someone with a good voice because he was increasingly taking a back seat in performances. Hawkins was the bandleader and frontman, but he'd often given Helm a song or two to sing in the show, and as they were often playing for several hours a night, the more singers the band had the better. Soon, with Helm, Danko, and Manuel all in the group and able to take lead vocals, Hawkins would start missing entire shows, though he still got more money than any of his backing group. Hawkins was also a hard taskmaster, and wanted to have the best band around. He already had great musicians, but he wanted them to be *the best*. And all the musicians in his band were now much younger than him, with tons of natural talent, but untrained. What he needed was someone with proper training, someone who knew theory and technique. He'd been trying for a long time to get someone like that, but Garth Hudson had kept turning him down. Hudson was older than any of the Hawks, though younger than Hawkins, and he was a multi-instrumentalist who was far better than any other musician on the circuit, having trained in a conservatory and learned how to play Bach and Chopin before switching to rock and roll. He thought the Hawks were too loud sounding and played too hard for him, but Helm kept on at Hawkins to meet any demands Hudson had, and Hawkins eventually agreed to give Hudson a higher wage than any of the other band members, buy him a new Lowry organ, and give him an extra ten dollars a week to give the rest of the band music lessons. Hudson agreed, and the Hawks now had a lineup of Helm on drums, Robertson on guitar, Manuel on piano, Danko on bass, Hudson on organ and alto sax, and Penfound on baritone sax. But these new young musicians were beginning to wonder why they actually needed a frontman who didn't turn up to many of the gigs, kept most of the money, and fined them whenever they broke one of his increasingly stringent set of rules. Indeed, they wondered why they needed a frontman at all. They already had three singers -- and sometimes a fourth, a singer called Bruce Bruno who would sometimes sit in with them when Penfound was unable to make a gig. They went to see Harold Kudlets, who Hawkins had recently sacked as his manager, and asked him if he could get them gigs for the same amount of money as they'd been getting with Hawkins. Kudlets was astonished to find how little Hawkins had been paying them, and told them that would be no problem at all. They had no frontman any more -- and made it a rule in all their contracts that the word "sideman" would never be used -- but Helm had been the leader for contractual purposes, as the musical director and longest-serving member (Hawkins, as a non-playing singer, had never joined the Musicians' Union so couldn't be the leader on contracts). So the band that had been Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks became the Levon Helm Sextet briefly -- but Penfound soon quit, and they became Levon and the Hawks. The Hawks really started to find their identity as their own band in 1964. They were already far more interested in playing soul than Hawkins had been, but they were also starting to get into playing soul *jazz*, especially after seeing the Cannonball Adderley Sextet play live: [Excerpt: Cannonball Adderley, "This Here"] What the group admired about the Adderley group more than anything else was a sense of restraint. Helm was particularly impressed with their drummer, Louie Hayes, and said of him "I got to see some great musicians over the years, and you see somebody like that play and you can tell, y' know, that the thing not to do is to just get it down on the floor and stomp the hell out of it!" The other influence they had, and one which would shape their sound even more, was a negative one. The two biggest bands on the charts at the time were the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and as Helm described it in his autobiography, the Hawks thought both bands' harmonies were "a blend of pale, homogenised, voices". He said "We felt we were better than the Beatles and the Beach Boys. We considered them our rivals, even though they'd never heard of us", and they decided to make their own harmonies sound as different as possible as a result. Where those groups emphasised a vocal blend, the Hawks were going to emphasise the *difference* in their voices in their own harmonies. The group were playing prestigious venues like the Peppermint Lounge, and while playing there they met up with John Hammond Jr, who they'd met previously in Canada. As you might remember from the first episode on Bob Dylan, Hammond Jr was the son of the John Hammond who we've talked about in many episodes, and was a blues musician in his own right. He invited Helm, Robertson, and Hudson to join the musicians, including Michael Bloomfield, who were playing on his new album, So Many Roads: [Excerpt: John P. Hammond, "Who Do You Love?"] That album was one of the inspirations that led Bob Dylan to start making electric rock music and to hire Bloomfield as his guitarist, decisions that would have profound implications for the Hawks. The first single the Hawks recorded for themselves after leaving Hawkins was produced by Henry Glover, and both sides were written by Robbie Robertson. "uh Uh Uh" shows the influence of the R&B bands they were listening to. What it reminds me most of is the material Ike and Tina Turner were playing at the time, but at points I think I can also hear the influence of Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper, who were rapidly becoming Robertson's favourite songwriters: [Excerpt: The Canadian Squires, "Uh Uh Uh"] None of the band were happy with that record, though. They'd played in the studio the same way they played live, trying to get a strong bass presence, but it just sounded bottom-heavy to them when they heard the record on a jukebox. That record was released as by The Canadian Squires -- according to Robertson, that was a name that the label imposed on them for the record, while according to Helm it was an alternative name they used so they could get bookings in places they'd only recently played, which didn't want the same band to play too often. One wonders if there was any confusion with the band Neil Young played in a year or so before that single... Around this time, the group also met up with Helm's old musical inspiration Sonny Boy Williamson II, who was impressed enough with them that there was some talk of them being his backing band (and it was in this meeting that Williamson apparently told Robertson "those English boys want to play the blues so bad, and they play the blues *so bad*", speaking of the bands who'd backed him in the UK, like the Yardbirds and the Animals). But sadly, Williamson died in May 1965 before any of these plans had time to come to fruition. Every opportunity for the group seemed to be closing up, even as they knew they were as good as any band around them. They had an offer from Aaron Schroeder, who ran Musicor Records but was more importantly a songwriter and publisher who  had written for Elvis Presley and published Gene Pitney. Schroeder wanted to sign the Hawks as a band and Robertson as a songwriter, but Henry Glover looked over the contracts for them, and told them "If you sign this you'd better be able to pay each other, because nobody else is going to be paying you". What happened next is the subject of some controversy, because as these things tend to go, several people became aware of the Hawks at the same time, but it's generally considered that nothing would have happened the same way were it not for Mary Martin. Martin is a pivotal figure in music business history -- among other things she discovered Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot, managed Van Morrison, and signed Emmylou Harris to Warner Brothers records -- but a somewhat unknown one who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Martin was from Toronto, but had moved to New York, where she was working in Albert Grossman's office, but she still had many connections to Canadian musicians and kept an eye out for them. The group had sent demo tapes to Grossman's offices, and Grossman had had no interest in them, but Martin was a fan and kept pushing the group on Grossman and his associates. One of those associates, of course, was Grossman's client Bob Dylan. As we heard in the episode on "Like a Rolling Stone", Dylan had started making records with electric backing, with musicians who included Mike Bloomfield, who had played with several of the Hawks on the Hammond album, and Al Kooper, who was a friend of the band. Martin gave Richard Manuel a copy of Dylan's new electric album Highway 61 Revisited, and he enjoyed it, though the rest of the group were less impressed: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited"] Dylan had played the Newport Folk Festival with some of the same musicians as played on his records, but Bloomfield in particular was more interested in continuing to play with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band than continuing with Dylan long-term. Mary Martin kept telling Dylan about this Canadian band she knew who would be perfect for him, and various people associated with the Grossman organisation, including Hammond, have claimed to have been sent down to New Jersey where the Hawks were playing to check them out in their live setting. The group have also mentioned that someone who looked a lot like Dylan was seen at some of their shows. Eventually, Dylan phoned Helm up and made an offer. He didn't need a full band at the moment -- he had Harvey Brooks on bass and Al Kooper on keyboards -- but he did need a lead guitar player and drummer for a couple of gigs he'd already booked, one in Forest Hills, New York, and a bigger gig at the Hollywood Bowl. Helm, unfamiliar with Dylan's work, actually asked Howard Kudlets if Dylan was capable of filling the Hollywood Bowl. The musicians rehearsed together and got a set together for the shows. Robertson and Helm thought the band sounded terrible, but Dylan liked the sound they were getting a lot. The audience in Forest Hills agreed with the Hawks, rather than Dylan, or so it would appear. As we heard in the "Like a Rolling Stone" episode, Dylan's turn towards rock music was *hated* by the folk purists who saw him as some sort of traitor to the movement, a movement whose figurehead he had become without wanting to. There were fifteen thousand people in the audience, and they listened politely enough to the first set, which Dylan played acoustically, But before the second set -- his first ever full electric set, rather than the very abridged one at Newport -- he told the musicians “I don't know what it will be like out there It's going to be some kind of  carnival and I want you to all know that up front. So go out there and keep playing no matter how weird it gets!” There's a terrible-quality audience recording of that show in circulation, and you can hear the crowd's reaction to the band and to the new material: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Ballad of a Thin Man" (live Forest Hills 1965, audience noise only)] The audience also threw things  at the musicians, knocking Al Kooper off his organ stool at one point. While Robertson remembered the Hollywood Bowl show as being an equally bad reaction, Helm remembered the audience there as being much more friendly, and the better-quality recording of that show seems to side with Helm: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm (live at the Hollywood Bowl 1965)"] After those two shows, Helm and Robertson went back to their regular gig. and in September they made another record. This one, again produced by Glover, was for Atlantic's Atco subsidiary, and was released as by Levon and the Hawks. Manuel took lead, and again both songs were written by Robertson: [Excerpt: Levon and the Hawks, "He Don't Love You (And He'll Break Your Heart)"] But again that record did nothing. Dylan was about to start his first full electric tour, and while Helm and Robertson had not thought the shows they'd played sounded particularly good, Dylan had, and he wanted the two of them to continue with him. But Robertson and, especially, Helm, were not interested in being someone's sidemen. They explained to Dylan that they already had a band -- Levon and the Hawks -- and he would take all of them or he would take none of them. Helm in particular had not been impressed with Dylan's music -- Helm was fundamentally an R&B fan, while Dylan's music was rooted in genres he had little time for -- but he was OK with doing it, so long as the entire band got to. As Mary Martin put it “I think that the wonderful and the splendid heart of the band, if you will, was Levon, and I think he really sort of said, ‘If it's just myself as drummer and Robbie…we're out. We don't want that. It's either us, the band, or nothing.' And you know what? Good for him.” Rather amazingly, Dylan agreed. When the band's residency in New Jersey finished, they headed back to Toronto to play some shows there, and Dylan flew up and rehearsed with them after each show. When the tour started, the billing was "Bob Dylan with Levon and the Hawks". That billing wasn't to last long. Dylan had been booked in for nine months of touring, and was also starting work on what would become widely considered the first double album in rock music history, Blonde on Blonde, and the original plan was that Levon and the Hawks would play with him throughout that time.  The initial recording sessions for the album produced nothing suitable for release -- the closest was "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a semi-parody of the Beatles' "I Want to be Your Man": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan with Levon and the Hawks, "I Wanna Be Your Lover"] But shortly into the tour, Helm quit. The booing had continued, and had even got worse, and Helm simply wasn't in the business to be booed at every night. Also, his whole conception of music was that you dance to it, and nobody was dancing to any of this. Helm quit the band, only telling Robertson of his plans, and first went off to LA, where he met up with some musicians from Oklahoma who had enjoyed seeing the Hawks when they'd played that state and had since moved out West -- people like Leon Russell, J.J. Cale (not John Cale of the Velvet Underground, but the one who wrote "Cocaine" which Eric Clapton later had a hit with), and John Ware (who would later go on to join the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band). They started loosely jamming with each other, sometimes also involving a young singer named Linda Ronstadt, but Helm eventually decided to give up music and go and work on an oil rig in New Orleans. Levon and the Hawks were now just the Hawks. The rest of the group soldiered on, replacing Helm with session drummer Bobby Gregg (who had played on Dylan's previous couple of albums, and had previously played with Sun Ra), and played on the initial sessions for Blonde on Blonde. But of those sessions, Dylan said a few weeks later "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that" One track from the sessions did get released -- the non-album single "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?"] There's some debate as to exactly who's playing drums on that -- Helm says in his autobiography that it's him, while the credits in the official CD releases tend to say it's Gregg. Either way, the track was an unexpected flop, not making the top forty in the US, though it made the top twenty in the UK. But the rest of the recordings with the now Helmless Hawks were less successful. Dylan was trying to get his new songs across, but this was a band who were used to playing raucous music for dancing, and so the attempts at more subtle songs didn't come off the way he wanted: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Hawks, "Visions of Johanna (take 5, 11-30-1965)"] Only one track from those initial New York sessions made the album -- "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" -- but even that only featured Robertson and Danko of the Hawks, with the rest of the instruments being played by session players: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan (One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"] The Hawks were a great live band, but great live bands are not necessarily the same thing as a great studio band. And that's especially the case with someone like Dylan. Dylan was someone who was used to recording entirely on his own, and to making records *quickly*. In total, for his fifteen studio albums up to 1974's Blood on the Tracks, Dylan spent a total of eighty-six days in the studio -- by comparison, the Beatles spent over a hundred days in the studio just on the Sgt Pepper album. It's not that the Hawks weren't a good band -- very far from it -- but that studio recording requires a different type of discipline, and that's doubly the case when you're playing with an idiosyncratic player like Dylan. The Hawks would remain Dylan's live backing band, but he wouldn't put out a studio recording with them backing him until 1974. Instead, Bob Johnston, the producer Dylan was working with, suggested a different plan. On his previous album, the Nashville session player Charlie McCoy had guested on "Desolation Row" and Dylan had found him easy to work with. Johnston lived in Nashville, and suggested that they could get the album completed more quickly and to Dylan's liking by using Nashville A-Team musicians. Dylan agreed to try it, and for the rest of the album he had Robertson on lead guitar and Al Kooper on keyboards, but every other musician was a Nashville session player, and they managed to get Dylan's songs recorded quickly and the way he heard them in his head: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"] Though Dylan being Dylan he did try to introduce an element of randomness to the recordings by having the Nashville musicians swap their instruments around and play each other's parts on "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35", though the Nashville players were still competent enough that they managed to get a usable, if shambolic, track recorded that way in a single take: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"] Dylan said later of the album "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." The album was released in late June 1966, a week before Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention, another double album, produced by Dylan's old producer Tom Wilson, and a few weeks after Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Dylan was at the forefront of a new progressive movement in rock music, a movement that was tying thoughtful, intelligent lyrics to studio experimentation and yet somehow managing to have commercial success. And a month after Blonde on Blonde came out, he stepped away from that position, and would never fully return to it. The first half of 1966 was taken up with near-constant touring, with Dylan backed by the Hawks and a succession of fill-in drummers -- first Bobby Gregg, then Sandy Konikoff, then Mickey Jones. This tour started in the US and Canada, with breaks for recording the album, and then moved on to Australia and Europe. The shows always followed the same pattern. First Dylan would perform an acoustic set, solo, with just an acoustic guitar and harmonica, which would generally go down well with the audience -- though sometimes they would get restless, prompting a certain amount of resistance from the performer: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman (live Paris 1966)"] But the second half of each show was electric, and that was where the problems would arise. The Hawks were playing at the top of their game -- some truly stunning performances: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Hawks, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (live in Liverpool 1966)"] But while the majority of the audience was happy to hear the music, there was a vocal portion that were utterly furious at the change in Dylan's musical style. Most notoriously, there was the performance at Manchester Free Trade Hall where this happened: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (live Manchester 1966)"] That kind of aggression from the audience had the effect of pushing the band on to greater heights a lot of the time -- and a bootleg of that show, mislabelled as the Royal Albert Hall, became one of the most legendary bootlegs in rock music history. Jimmy Page would apparently buy a copy of the bootleg every time he saw one, thinking it was the best album ever made. But while Dylan and the Hawks played defiantly, that kind of audience reaction gets wearing. As Dylan later said, “Judas, the most hated name in human history, and for what—for playing an electric guitar. As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord, and delivering him up to be crucified; all those evil mothers can rot in hell.” And this wasn't the only stress Dylan, in particular, was under. D.A. Pennebaker was making a documentary of the tour -- a follow-up to his documentary of the 1965 tour, which had not yet come out. Dylan talked about the 1965 documentary, Don't Look Back, as being Pennebaker's film of Dylan, but this was going to be Dylan's film, with him directing the director. That footage shows Dylan as nervy and anxious, and covering for the anxiety with a veneer of flippancy. Some of Dylan's behaviour on both tours is unpleasant in ways that can't easily be justified (and which he has later publicly regretted), but there's also a seeming cruelty to some of his interactions with the press and public that actually reads more as frustration. Over and over again he's asked questions -- about being the voice of a generation or the leader of a protest movement -- which are simply based on incorrect premises. When someone asks you a question like this, there are only a few options you can take, none of them good. You can dissect the question, revealing the incorrect premises, and then answer a different question that isn't what they asked, which isn't really an option at all given the kind of rapid-fire situation Dylan was in. You can answer the question as asked, which ends up being dishonest. Or you can be flip and dismissive, which is the tactic Dylan chose. Dylan wasn't the only one -- this is basically what the Beatles did at press conferences. But where the Beatles were a gang and so came off as being fun, Dylan doing the same thing came off as arrogant and aggressive. One of the most famous artifacts of the whole tour is a long piece of footage recorded for the documentary, with Dylan and John Lennon riding in the back of a taxi, both clearly deeply uncomfortable, trying to be funny and impress the other, but neither actually wanting to be there: [Excerpt Dylan and Lennon conversation] 33) Part of the reason Dylan wanted to go home was that he had a whole new lifestyle. Up until 1964 he had been very much a city person, but as he had grown more famous, he'd found New York stifling. Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary had a cabin in Woodstock, where he'd grown up, and after Dylan had spent a month there in summer 1964, he'd fallen in love with the area. Albert Grossman had also bought a home there, on Yarrow's advice, and had given Dylan free run of the place, and Dylan had decided he wanted to move there permanently and bought his own home there. He had also married, to Sara Lowndes (whose name is, as far as I can tell, pronounced "Sarah" even though it's spelled "Sara"), and she had given birth to his first child (and he had adopted her child from her previous marriage). Very little is actually known about Sara, who unlike many other partners of rock stars at this point seemed positively to detest the limelight, and whose privacy Dylan has continued to respect even after the end of their marriage in the late seventies, but it's apparent that the two were very much in love, and that Dylan wanted to be back with his wife and kids, in the country, not going from one strange city to another being asked insipid questions and having abuse screamed at him. He was also tired of the pressure to produce work constantly. He'd signed a contract for a novel, called Tarantula, which he'd written a draft of but was unhappy with, and he'd put out two single albums and a double-album in a little over a year -- all of them considered among the greatest albums ever made. He could only keep up this rate of production and performance with a large intake of speed, and he was sometimes staying up for four days straight to do so. After the European leg of the tour, Dylan was meant to take some time to finish overdubs on Blonde on Blonde, edit the film of the tour for a TV special, with his friend Howard Alk, and proof the galleys for Tarantula, before going on a second world tour in the autumn. That world tour never happened. Dylan was in a motorcycle accident near his home, and had to take time out to recover. There has been a lot of discussion as to how serious the accident actually was, because Dylan's manager Albert Grossman was known to threaten to break contracts by claiming his performers were sick, and because Dylan essentially disappeared from public view for the next eighteen months. Every possible interpretation of the events has been put about by someone, from Dylan having been close to death, to the entire story being put up as a fake. As Dylan is someone who is far more protective of his privacy than most rock stars, it's doubtful we'll ever know the precise truth, but putting together the various accounts Dylan's injuries were bad but not life-threatening, but they acted as a wake-up call -- if he carried on living like he had been, how much longer could he continue? in his sort-of autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan described this period, saying "I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses." All his forthcoming studio and tour dates were cancelled, and Dylan took the time out to recover, and to work on his film, Eat the Document. But it's clear that nobody was sure at first exactly how long Dylan's hiatus from touring was going to last. As it turned out, he wouldn't do another tour until the mid-seventies, and would barely even play any one-off gigs in the intervening time. But nobody knew that at the time, and so to be on the safe side the Hawks were being kept on a retainer. They'd always intended to work on their own music anyway -- they didn't just want to be anyone's backing band -- so they took this time to kick a few ideas around, but they were hamstrung by the fact that it was difficult to find rehearsal space in New York City, and they didn't have any gigs. Their main musical work in the few months between summer 1966 and spring 1967 was some recordings for the soundtrack of a film Peter Yarrow was making. You Are What You Eat is a bizarre hippie collage of a film, documenting the counterculture between 1966 when Yarrow started making it and 1968 when it came out. Carl Franzoni, one of the leaders of the LA freak movement that we've talked about in episodes on the Byrds, Love, and the Mothers of Invention, said of the film “If you ever see this movie you'll understand what ‘freaks' are. It'll let you see the L.A. freaks, the San Francisco freaks, and the New York freaks. It was like a documentary and it was about the makings of what freaks were about. And it had a philosophy, a very definite philosophy: that you are free-spirited, artistic." It's now most known for introducing the song "My Name is Jack" by John Simon, the film's music supervisor: [Excerpt: John Simon, "My Name is Jack"] That song would go on to be a top ten hit in the UK for Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "My Name is Jack"] The Hawks contributed backing music for several songs for the film, in which they acted as backing band for another old Greenwich Village folkie who had been friends with Yarrow and Dylan but who was not yet the star he would soon become, Tiny Tim: [Excerpt: Tiny Tim, "Sonny Boy"] This was their first time playing together properly since the end of the European tour, and Sid Griffin has noted that these Tiny Tim sessions are the first time you can really hear the sound that the group would develop over the next year, and which would characterise them for their whole career. Robertson, Danko, and Manuel also did a session, not for the film with another of Grossman's discoveries, Carly Simon, playing a version of "Baby Let Me Follow You Down", a song they'd played a lot with Dylan on the tour that spring. That recording has never been released, and I've only managed to track down a brief clip of it from a BBC documentary, with Simon and an interviewer talking over most of the clip (so this won't be in the Mixcloud I put together of songs): [Excerpt: Carly Simon, "Baby Let Me Follow You Down"] That recording is notable though because as well as Robertson, Danko, and Manuel, and Dylan's regular studio keyboard players Al Kooper and Paul Griffin, it also features Levon Helm on drums, even though Helm had still not rejoined the band and was at the time mostly working in New Orleans. But his name's on the session log, so he must have m

Sean Illing talks with Jennifer Senior, the Pulitzer-winning staff writer at the Atlantic, about her recent piece on Steve Bannon called "American Rasputin." Through incredible firsthand access and detailed reporting, Senior shows how Bannon is still an effective media manipulator through his popular "War Room" podcast. Sean and Jennifer discuss what Bannon's true political beliefs might be, the role he played in plotting the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and the role he might already be playing in setting up the next insurrection. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), Interviews Writer, Vox Guest: Jennifer Senior (@JenSeniorNY), staff writer, The Atlantic References:  "American Rasputin" by Jennifer Senior (June 6; The Atlantic) UPDATE: "Bannon, Facing Jail and Fines, Agrees to Testify to Jan. 6 Panel" by Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman (July 10; New York Times) "Steve Bannon's 'We Build the Wall' Codefendants Plead Guilty" by Bob Van Voris (Apr. 21; Bloomberg) "Steve Bannon and U.S. ultra-conservatives take aim at Pope Francis" by Richard Engel and Kennett Werner (Apr. 12, 2019; NBC News) "'Flood the zone with shit': How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy" by Sean Illing (updated Feb. 6, 2020; Vox) The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing (2022; U. Chicago) American Dharma, dir. by Errol Morris (2019) The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strauss and Neil Howe (Crown; 1997) "The work" of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (d. 1949) "What I Learned Binge-Watching Steve Bannon's Documentaries" by Adam Wren (Politico; Dec. 2016) "McLuhan would blow hot and cool about today's internet" by Nick Carr (Nov. 1, 2007; The Guardian) Enjoyed this episode? Rate Vox Conversations ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of Vox Conversations by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. Support Vox Conversations by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Deputy Editorial Director, Vox Talk: Amber Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices