PLAYBOY: You said a few minutes ago that all of contemporary man’s traditional values, attitudes and institutions are going to be destroyed and replaced in and by the new electric age. That’s a pretty sweeping generalization. Apart from the complex psychosocial metamorphoses you’ve mentioned, would you explain in more detail some of the specific changes you foresee?
Playboy: You said a few minutes ago that all the traditional values, attitudes, and institutional customs of contemporary people are gradually being destroyed and replaced by the new electronic age because of the new electronic age, which is a very general generalization. In addition to the complex psychosocial changes that you have already mentioned, can you explain in more detail some of the specific changes that you foresee?
McLUHAN: The transformations are taking place everywhere around us. As the old value systems crumble, so do all the institutional clothing and garbage they fashioned. The cities, corporate extensions of our physical organs, are withering and being translated along with all other such extensions into information systems, as television and the jet—by compressing time and space—make all the world one village and destroy the old citycountry dichotomy. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles—all will disappear like the dinosaur. The automobile, too, will soon be as obsolete as the cities it is currently strangling, replaced by new antigravitational technology. The marketing systems and the stock market as we know them today will soon be dead as the dodo, and automation will end the traditional concept of the job, replacing it with a role, and giving men the breath of leisure. The electric media will create a world of dropouts from the old fragmented society, with its neatly compartmentalized analytic functions, and cause people to drop in to the new integrated global-village community.
McLuhan: This is happening all around us. All kinds of old value systems will collapse, and all the old clothes and garbage they have shaped will disappear. As television and jets – by compressing time and space – have turned the world into a village and erased the rural-urban dichotomy of the past, the city, as a common extension of our bodily organs, has gradually disappeared and been transformed into an information system, along with all other extensions. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles – every city will disappear like a dinosaur. The car will soon be obsolete like the city it is clogging up, replaced by new anti-gravity technology. The marketing system and stock market as we know it today will soon become extinct like a dodo, and automation will put an end to traditional occupations in favor of roles and the vitality of people who do not work for a living. Electronic media will create a world of exiters who have withdrawn from the old fragmented society and its neatly divided analytical functions, while at the same time engaging people into the new integrated global village community.
Press: The global village is caused by the compression of time and space by electronic media and aircraft, the global transformation into a planetary information system, the disappearance of urban-rural antagonism, the disappearance of large cities, the transformation of cities from hardware-based to software-based, and the settlement of people highlights the function of information. The old things in the written culture have been transformed into information systems and information events. The information system and software here are dynamic.
Cars will be replaced by new gravity-defying technologies, the imagination of satellites and the promise to travelers. The unprecedented flow of information and logistics has greatly reduced the necessity of travel for otaku and otaku, angelized socialization has become the main interpersonal mode, and face-to-face socialization has become a major program of life.
Dropouts include dropouts, escapists. With the deepening of the electronic age, there are more and more positive and less derogatory meanings for those who quit. The exiter exemplifies a pattern that has never been seen in the case of slow information: the target switches at any time.
The written-mechanical marketing system, the stock market is about to become obsolete. The dodo, dodo, the lone pigeon, by extension, is a person who is behind the times, an obsolete thing.
In the electronic age, roles have replaced occupations, and people are full of vitality and do not live by work but by action.