In the scope of things, Neil Postman is the layman’s version, or an interpreter of Marshall McLuhan. He is more than that of course – he’s a applicator and a developer too, but I don’t think the average person would connect with McLuhan and therein lies the value of Postman. I originally found Postman because his book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” was mentioned and footnoted in so many of the books I was reading. As I began to read more media books I saw the common reference to McLuhan in them and that’s how I discovered him.
Rather than looking to others who were making observations about media, McLuhan’s looked to people like the French philosopher and priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and English painter and author Wyndham Lewis for insights into technology. He did so, I believe, because he believed that, as Wyndham Lewis said:
“The artist is involved in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person who lives in the present.”
Considering the accuracy of the observations and predictions he made based on this belief, maybe we would be wise to seek the same sources in our own era.
I’m not sure who else could be considered on McLuhan’s level as a master in the sense of seeing and saying what had previously gone unseen and unsaid. Jacques Ellul perhaps?
It is still widely believed by the avant guard of media arts (students and profs mostly) that McLuhan’s work has barely begun to be appreciated and recognized for what it is. Some use the word “prophet”; in many cases I think that’s appropriate. I guess if you believe as I do that McLuhan was way ahead of his time in thinking and analysis, then you might want to spend some time pleading this case.
This is too strong a metaphor, but you could see McLuhan as source material (scripture) and most others as analysis of source material (commentary)…. and you could make an interesting parallel to how many books we read that are not the Bible compared to how little actual Bible we read… but that’s a bit off-topic.
