{"id":9332,"date":"2026-04-18T14:20:56","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ic4ml.org\/?post_type=journal-article&p=9332"},"modified":"2026-04-20T09:57:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T14:57:58","slug":"marshall-mcluhan-knew-what-we-were-and-what-we-were-in-for","status":"publish","type":"journal-article","link":"https:\/\/ic4ml.org\/es\/journal-article\/marshall-mcluhan-knew-what-we-were-and-what-we-were-in-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshall McLuhan knew what we were. And what we were in for."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Letter from Guest Editors, Neil Andersen and Carol Arcus<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
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\u201c[The] instantaneous world of electric informational media involves all of us all at once. Ours is a brand new world of all-at-once-ness. The global village is not created by the motor car or even by the airplane. It’s created by instant electronic information movement.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The global village is at once as wide as the planet and as small as a little town where everybody is maliciously engaged in poking his nose into everybody else’s business.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The global village is a world in which you don’t necessarily have harmony. You have extreme concern with everybody else’s business and much involvement in everybody else’s life.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a sort of Ann Landers column writ large, and it doesn’t necessarily mean harmony and peace and quiet, but it does mean huge involvement in everybody else’s affairs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so the global village is as big as a planet and as small as the village post office.\u201d – Marshall McLuhan.*<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*From the experimental documentary, This is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage, 1967<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Directed and produced by Ernest Pintoff and Guy Fraumeni. Based on a book by Quentin Fiore<\/a>. Based on a book by Marshall McLuhan<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Marshall McLuhan knew what we were. And what we were in for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We live in the media environment that Marshall McLuhan described 60 years ago, but intensified by algorithmic systems and generative AI that shape not just what we know, but how we perceive, think, and relate to one another. Rather than conceptualizing this electronic environment\u2014this water in which we swim\u2014as a linear chain of cause-and-effect processes, he conceived of it as a mosaic of interconnected fragments\u2013an ecosystem dependent on seemingly improbable connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This issue of the Journal of Media Literacy<\/em> presents a mosaic of those ideas, across different media, about this man\u2019s ideas and this – our – world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To think with<\/em> and through<\/em> Marshall McLuhan is to think mosaically\u2014laterally , through patterns and connections rather than a straight line. It\u2019s a way of thinking that mirrors the human brain, and especially McLuhan\u2019s own: made up of fragments, associations, and sudden flashes of insight\u2014think of his \u201cprobes\u201d here. A mosaic\u2014like a tiled floor\u2014is built from small pieces placed beside one another because of their relationship in colour or shape; the meaning doesn\u2019t reside in any one piece, but emerges through the whole. McLuhan\u2019s fascination with Finnegans Wake<\/em> is relevant here. What can seem, up close, like a jumble of words begins to form meaning when the reader steps back\u2014a fitting metaphor for the twentieth-century experience that Joyce evoked through his non-linear, post-literate narrative, suggesting that some stories cannot be told in a neat, grammatical sequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same idea shapes this issue. The articles sit alongside each other, inviting us to create the connections between them. In this way, media ecology also fits: our digital environment works in an \u201call-at-once\u201d way, where individual posts or messages may seem independent and disconnected, but instead interconnect to create patterns that tell a larger, more complex story of interdependence. The challenge is learning how to see those patterns, and to recognize which fragments are central to the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us go then you and I\u2026 Enjoy this mosaic as you remind yourself of McLuhan\u2019s wordcraft:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wouldn\u2019t have seen it if I didn\u2019t believe it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Man\u2019s reach should exceed his grasp, or what\u2019s a metaphor?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Current Issues<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n