Media professor/expert Paul Levinson on new media influence

Philosophical interview about the state and future of the media with Fordham University's Chair of Communication and Media Studies, Paul Levinson. Levinson is the author of numerous fictional and nonfiction books including "Digital McLuhan" and "The Soft Edge" and has appeared in countless media venues from PBS to Fox to offer his insight on media issues. Levinson discusses the current exponential rise of new media and what this means for us all in terms of expression, information and challenge. He also discusses his thoughts on the iconic Marshall McLuhan and what he would think of the extraordinary digital age we live and now create in.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Paul Levinson]

@webins ... actually, i'm on the side of humanity ... :)

[chingy1234567]

Smart guy

[Ben Fosh]

what?! talk about over complicating a sentence...

[TheTTBT]

McLuhan embraced becoming a different/new intellectual, rooted in the old syntax of classical intellectualism and its accompanying privacy. This explains the feeling of newness in his conjecture regarding media patterns as well as the acoustic "re-cognition" of his epiphany via the Thunder portmanteau's of James Joyce in his great work "Finnegan's Wake".

[Paul Levinson]

What do you think McLuhan meant when he said "I don't explain - I explore." His explorations or "probes" were intended to alert people, to prod them about the significance of media. He left the conclusions - the explanations - to others. To be clear: what McLuhan thought was naive is that technology has no effect. But he insisted that his purpose was not judge the nature of the effect.

[smileykermit]

In all fairness, McLuhan said and wrote a lot of things. It's in his interviews & letters that he expresses dismay about the end of the Gutenberg era, the death of the individual & the onset of the tribal. He did say many times that the "neither good nor bad" syndrome is naive. Every media has it's effect and for every "innovation" there is an amputation. For instance, air conditioning & television have virtually destroyed neighborhoods. Life is not found indoors in isolation...

[Paul Levinson]

What McLuhan warned about is people who ignore the influence of media. He expressly said, many tines, that he viewed media neither as inherently dangerous or helpful - what was dangerous was failing to appreciate that the influence of media was profound.

[smileykermit]

I think McLuhan would have been more repulsed than overjoyed by today's media saturation. Although these gents have turned out a great "product" it seems that Levinson doesn't understand the simple statement:" the Medium is the Message" and how it dictates how we react to what we are exposed to. McLuhan warned against those who say exactly what Levinson claims when he compares all mediums to a knife... it's how you use it... It's right there in Understanding Media...

[TheAmalali]

thanks

[NipoteZia]

Terrific, thought-provoking video.