PROBING MCLUHAN: UNDERSTANDING MEDIA CULTURE 4A

Is TV Still Sticky in the Age of a Digital McLuhan?
Gary Genosko,
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair, Department of Sociology, Lakehead University.

At the end of the cathode ray tubes dominance of televisual hardware, new flat screens are emerging in domestic, commercial and public spaces the so-called plasma and liquid crystal display (LCD) and organic light-emitting diode technologies (OLED). These sets are commercially valorized through new media rhetorics. Nothing of the tactile experience of the tube upon which McLuhan reflected seems to have been lost in the dying days of the reign CRT. But surely, after the ray gun, the ìscanning fingerî is lost to the projector. Is, then, digital TV tactile? Is TV still cool? Is McLuhan forever out of focus in the age of smart, high-definition TV?

About Gary Genosko
Gary Genosko is Canada Research Chair in Technoculture at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. Recently, he edited the three volume collection Marshall McLuhan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, forthcoming from Routledge. He is editor of The Semiotic Review of Books, and coeditor of the special issue on Technology and Culture of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. His ebook, McLuhan and Baudrillard: The Masters of Implosion, is available from Taylor&Francis.

TOPIA - Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies in partnership with Probe 2004, the McLuhan International Festival of the Future The Underground, Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen St. W., Toronto. 2004

Category:

Education

Tags:

• mcluhan
• media
• culture
• technology