Step back* Course * Day 1*McLuhan Site* your TV is tuned to:http://www.scruz.net/~markb/McLuhan/course/index.html
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Understanding Media: The Individual and Society

TIME: Fri., March15, 6:30-9:30 pm
Fri March 22, 6:30-11pm
Fri March 29 6:30pm-8pm

1. The official course description.
2. The unoffical spring 96 course description

This course seeks to understand how in this digital era we are inventing the rules, the roles, and the reasons for our identities as artists, business professionals, media critics, and architects. The strategy will be to study all media, then examine closely digital interactive and networked media and finally consider emerging individual and social models.

Re-opening Marshall McLuhan's "Understanding Media" (MIT Press 1995) as a base to reconsider
our media assumptions, the instructor shares years of research into the enigmatic life and newly
re-explored ideas of Marshall McLuhan. After examining the principles of media, we will look at
multimedia. To understand multi-modal experiences we will look at current models of the mind,
emotion and the senses with special emphasis on synesthesia theory. We will look further at digital
networks and review Nicholas Negroponte's "Being Digital", the writings of George Gilder and
contemporary media critics. To complete a foundation for future thinking, we will review modern
media and their effects and see how modern architectural theories regard design for personal and
social use.


Special Class Note: The second day of class will be lengthened since Eric McLuhan will be making a special presentation which overlaps on time of our third day. Eric McLuhan, co-author of several books with his father Marshall McLuhan, will appear on the Multimedia Pioneers Lecture Series Fri., March 29 at 8 pm.

as it happens...

Day 1
A study of all media is essential

Class

Contacts- Why I am here, how about you ? - name,address, phone,email,web

Pass the camera - class picture & personal portraits (Day 1)

Lesson Becoming media aware as McLuhan

Mission

- new curriculum

- all media are one

- compare media

- paint from the information palette

- multimedia design of web pages

McLuhan at 100 mph

- Bio & Books

- McLuhan Kiosk - on the web & demo

What did he say?
- 40 year old man who exploded

- Mechanical Bride - what are our adult pals up to?

-Medium is the Message, Global Village

-What is news? delivery, told to, read to, shown. What is important? Says who? Who makes it and why?

Individual & Society
- The book is an extension of the eye

- War & Peace in the Global Village

- web as warfare

- video interview with T.Wolfe

- City as Classroom - perceptions

Media

Day's Web Page

Tom Wolfe article - hilite to discuss

Understanding Media article acoustic vs visual- hilite to discuss
UM from MIT, Wired, CD from Voyager

resources: video, web access, MAC, CD-ROM, digital camera, repros, Kiosk CD, Mac SCSI Drive, McLuhan books, Powerbook

Day 2
Understanding personal experience and digital technology

Class

Contacts & News

Pass the camera - class pic & portraits
Review reading on acoustic vs visual

Wasting time on voice mail, high speed highway signs like headlines - delivering survival
Structure of newspaper stories who, what, when, where, why, how
3rd world leaps - cell phones in Poland - dumping the balast of infrastructure.
Interpretation

Lesson

Becoming a techno-media visionary as Gilder & Negroponte

Buzzwords
The best way to predict the future is to invent it - Alan Kay
Profiles of the Future
Computers as media, what it is, the blinking tube, personal computer revolution
George Gilder's view

Individual & Society:Marat/Sade -P. Weiss & the perverse political animal
What's more important than sex, drugs, rock & roll?
Sense ratios - extensions & Bergson - why great restaurants are low light.
Synesthesia theory - read/write
Multimedia & Emotion

Digital persona, voice & choice, produce & consume
Interactivity & VR- read,hear, see, do (politics - taking action)

Media

Day's Web Page

Negroponte / Gilder / Understanding Media or optional reading

resources: web access, MAC, video, digital camera, repros, Dr. Tinker software

Day 3

What are we building and why?

Class

Contacts & News & Evalutations with Bali Hai

Pass the camera - class picture & personal portraits (Day 3)
Tetrads -Eric McLuhan teacher!
Gombrich & Synesthesia

Lesson

Your own special island

Architecture and pasta

Deconstruction Jacques Derrida Interview
Deconstruction Architecture - Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear

History & Transitions - Architecture & Media - Acoustic vs Visual (Lesson 1) : The best way to predict the future is to invent it - Alan Kay

Building & Design - Form & Function - How Buildings Learn, Feng Shui
City of Bits

Identity, Sense of Place, Sense of Time - Pattern Language
Individual - Rand / Society - Kevin Kelly

Making your own special island - Global village voice & choice, produce & consume

Media

Day's Web Page

Deconstruction & Understanding Media

resources: web access, video, deconstruction paper, digital camera, Bali Hai

DAY3 Extra
March 29 1996 Friday 8pm

Eric McLuhan's Lecture

Course-related outbound links

1. The McLuhan web site

Course-related books

1. Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media (MIT Press 1995)
   Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital
   George Gilder's Life After Television
   William Mitchell's City of Bits
   Christopher Alexander's Timeless Way of Building and Pattern Language
   Stuart Brand's How Buildings Learn
   Dr. Richard Cytowic's The Man Who Tasted Shapes and The Neurological Side of Neuropsychology

comments to mark beaulieu: markb@scruznet.com
Your TV is tuned to http://www.digitallantern.net/beaulieuhome.htm/McLuhan/course/
edited April 7, 1996