La Comprensión de los Medios en la Era Digital

So, what's up with the Spanish title for this post, you may be asking? Or maybe you're just saying, ¿Qué pasa?

Well here's the story. A while back, my friends and colleagues from Mexico, Fernando Gutiérrez and Octavio Islas, asked me if I would co-edit an anthology with them on the theme of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. That book was published back in 1964, and our volume came out last year, just a couple of years past the anniversary.

Now, let me make it clear that I do not speak Spanish, so my role as editor was somewhat different from what it would normally be. Aside from contributing my own chapter, I solicited 7 English language contributions, which I was responsible for editing, prior to their translation. In case you were curious, those chapter authors are Corey Anton, Paul Levinson, Paul Lippert, Robert K. Logan, Eric McLuhan, James Morrison, and Michael Plugh.

I also solicited one other contribution that was written in Portuguese, written by Brazilian scholars Adriana Braga and Adriano Rodrigues, which I didn't edit, seeing as I don't speak Portuguese either. The rest of the contributors were Carlos Fernández Collado, Jesús Galindo, Jorge Hidalgo, and Claudia Benassini, along with Fernando and Octavio.

So anyway, the book was published by a Mexico City based publisher, Alfaomega, and here's the cover:

And you can read all about the book on the publisher's website, if you can read Spanish, that is. And here is the Table of Contents:

Presentació

Prefacio James Morrison

Capítulo 1 Eric McLuhan
50 años después...Retrospección y perspectiva de la obra de Marshall McLuhan

Capítulo 2 Fernando Gutiérrez
La contribución de Marshall McLuhan para la comprensión de los ambientes mediáticos en la nueva era digital

Capítulo 3 Octavio Islas
Apuntes esenciales para una mejor lectura de La Comprensión de los medios como las extensiones del hombre

Capítulo 4 Lance Strate
El mensaje en La comprensión de los medios

Capítulo 5 Carlos Fernández Collado
Topoguía descriptiva para La comprensión de los medios

Capítulo 6 Jesús Galindo
La ingeniería en comunicación social y el pensamiento de Marshall McLuhan. Diálogo sobre constructivismo tecnológico de lo social

Capítulo 7 Corey Anton
Cinco formas para entender... Los Medios como las Extensiones del Hombre

Capítulo 8 Paul Lippert
McLuhan como una forma de arte

Capítulo 9 Robert K. Logan
McLuhan y su comprensión de los medios

Capítulo 10 Adriana Braga y Adriano Rodrigues
El pensamiento sistémico y el sujeto en la obra de McLuhan

Capítulo 11 Michael Plugh
Un mundo inteligente: La extensión del proyecto de automatización de McLuhan

Capítulo 12 Jorge Hidalgo
La comprensión del hombre como una extensión de los medios

Capítulo 13 Paul Levinson
McLuhan en la era de los medios sociales

Capítulo 14 Claudia Benassini
La nueva aldea global: el caso Facebook

And in case you want to order a copy, here's the Amazon link (and ordering through this portal does help support these here blogging efforts):

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And I do want to add, given the current political climate, that I am especially proud to have a longstanding connection to my colleagues in Mexico, and that I have great respect and affection for them, and for their nation. 

I should mention that Octavio Islas is now on the faculty of the Universidad de los Hemisferios (University of the Hemispheres), in Quito, Ecuador. So this anthology is truly a pan-American product!

And, I guess that all that's left to say is, adios, until next time.

Together Again at Tech-Mex

So, while I was in Mexico City this past March to to give a series of lectures at Universidad Panamericana, as I mentioned in my recent post, My Panamericana Visit, I also had a chance to see my friends and fellow media ecology enthusiasts, Octavio Islas, and Fernando Gutiérrez. 

And I was quite happy to learn that Fernando has moved up in the world, and is now Director (equivalent of Dean) of the División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (School of Social Sciences and Humanities) at the Santa Fe Campus (a section of Mexico City that is home to many business headquarters, kind of their high tech center) of Technológico de Monterry (Monterrey Tech). 

Congratulations, Fernando!

 
So, I had a chance to visit his campus, and give a guest lecture to one of his new media classes, an enjoyable experience. The students were all bright and attentive, and there were also several faculty members present. And I suppose that's how my little presentation to the class wound up on Twitter:

RT @AndresRBG7: Today we have @LanceStrate in @Tec_Santa_Fe thanks to @fer_gut He'll be talking about #mediaecology pic.twitter.com/TmggOtSJnd

— Lance Strate (@LanceStrate) March 17, 2015

 
Of course I spoke about media ecology, and the Media Ecology Association:

RT @fer_gut: With @LanceStrate one of the founders of the Media Ecology Association #mediaecology @Tec_Santa_Fe pic.twitter.com/WZpriJ1fcD

— Lance Strate (@LanceStrate) March 17, 2015

But I talked about media ecology especially in regard to the study of new media:

RT @AndresRBG7: "We remade the world" @LanceStrate in @tecdemty @tecsantafe with @fer_gut pic.twitter.com/R37nSqEjvF

— Lance Strate (@LanceStrate) March 17, 2015

And speaking of new media, this also gave me the opportunity to try out embedding tweets in a blog post, something I had not had the opportunity to experiment with before. Funny to see that little 15 second video, which really is mostly medium, very little message:

RT @AndresRBG7: "We remade the world" @LanceStrate in @tecdemty @tecsantafe with @fer_gut pic.twitter.com/R37nSqEjvF

— Lance Strate (@LanceStrate) March 17, 2015

And also more than a little self-reflexive, in that it is a video of me showing the class another video (while I'm talking over and about it). And in case you're curious about the video I was showing, it was one I included in my 2011 post, The Choral Village. The video, by composer Eric Whitacre, wonderfully illustrates the potential of new media for collaborations that would not otherwise be possible, while also exemplifying the dematerialization accomplished by electronic media, the disembodiment that we experience, or what McLuhan referred to as being discarnate and angelic, as well as what Sherry Turkle so aptly summarized as being alone together.

But what was truly marvelous about my Mexico City trip was the opportunity to be together together. Nothing can quite take its place.

My Panamericana Visit

So, back in March, I was brought down to Mexico City to do some talking at Universidad Panamericana, a charming campus in the heart of the city. And in this post, I mostly want to share some images from that visit. Let's start with the main bit of publicity:

Don't speak Spanish? Don't worry, neither do I, but I think you can see that I spoke on the topic of violence and media, a topic assigned to me by my host, with a subtitle making reference to the future of the nation-state of Mexico. The talked was billed as a "master class" although it might be more accurate to refer to it as a three-day lecture series, and it was sponsored by both the communication and philosophy faculty at Panamericana U. Of course, my talk was all about media ecology, which is what my host, Professor Laura Trujillo, a McLuhan scholar in her own right, wanted.

One of the jumping off points for my lectures was my article, "The Fall of Nations: The Fate of Social Systems in the New Media Environment," published online in the Brazilian journal E-Compós (also published in Portuguese translation as "A Queda das Nações: O Destino dos Sistemas Sociais no Novo Ambiente Midiático"). I also drew on posts I had written regarding Hannah Arendt's views on violence as they relate to media ecology, which originally appeared here on Blog Time Passing in four parts: Violence and Technology, Violence and Power, Violence and Identity, and Violence and Unity. At the request of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, these posts were merged into one single essay and posted on their blog under the title of "Violence, Power, Technology, and Identity" (which I then commented on in a post here on Blog Time Passing entitled, Arendt Come Due).

Oh, and the lectures were sponsored by Cátedra Carlos Llano, that's why it gets the big print. According to another one of my hosts, Fernando Galindo, Carlos Llano was a Spanish-Mexican philosopher, one of the founders of the Universidad Panamericana. and its first President. He also founded Panamericana's IPADE-Business School, and the magazine Istmo. The endowment for the master class was set up, after he passed away, by Panamericana and IPADE, I was the third lecturer in this series, and the first to be cosponsored by the Communication Department.

Anyway, here are some images from the lecture series:

And here's a cool little student news video they made. It's mostly in Spanish, but my comments are in English of course:





While I was there, I also gave an additional public lecture for alumni and other guests on the topic of media ecology. Here I am with the poster for that event, alone, and with my host Laura Trujillo:

As you can see, it also served as a plug for the Media Ecology Association. Anyway, those are the before images, and here's the aftermath:

So I gave four lectures over three days, and if you think I look a little tired in some of the pictures, that may be why. But I never seem to get tired of talking about media ecology. Moreover, my hosts were truly gracious, and the opportunity to engage in dialogue and share ideas was simply wonderful. I am grateful to have had the chance to visit, make new friends, and spread the message about studying the medium.

Scenes from Puebla

So, in my previous post, Puebla Entrevista, I mentioned that last week I was in the city of Puebla, Mexico, as an invited guest and participant at a conference on strategic communication at Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, aka BUAP.  And in addition to the video interview in the last post, there were a great many pictures taken at this event, many more than I'll repost here, but I thought I'd share a few of them, along with some sense of what I was involved with down there.

One of my main activities was giving a workshop on New Media and Strategic Communication:  A Media Ecology Approach.  On the left is a photo of me from the first day of the workshop, and it was rather warm in the room, yes, so I took my jacket off.  There were about 30 participants in the workshop, mostly undergraduates, some graduate students, and a few faculty.  I spent the first half of the workshop explaining the media ecology approach, and ways to analyze media and communication environments, with specific attention to social media connections, and then the second half on specifics relating to new media, especially in regard to digital form.

Since I don't speak Spanish, the conference organizers provided a translator, so I started out speaking slowly, and pausing every sentence or two to let the translator translate.  Well, funny thing is, after a little while, the students started to correct the translator's translation!  Seems they understood  English better than he did. And after a little while longer, they asked him to stop translating altogether! They were fine with just listening to me, and asking questions if need be.

Of course, hospitality was a big part of the occasion, and here we are, the conference organizers and invited guests, having lunch/dinner at a restaurant in Puebla. I'm showing something on my cellphone, I don't recall what now, but everywhere you go nowadays, our mobile devices are as omnipresent as cigarettes once were.

So, the second day I had a different translator, but this was for some plenary sessions that I was participating on.  Students with good competency in English naturally were open to selecting my workshop, and those lacking the same competency would tend to select a different workshop, but for speaking to all of the attendees, a good translator was essential, and the organizers found a doctoral student in linguistics to do the job!

So. the first session I was on, I was asked to speak about the Media Ecology Association as an organization, and media ecology as a field. 

And my second session was a book-oriented panel, so I talked about On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology

Of course, some of the most interesting conversations took place outside of the formal events.

A third session I took part in included my two friends from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Estado de México, Octavio Islas (below on the right) and Fernando Gutiérez (2nd from the right, next to Octavio):

And while I didn't plan on it, since it turned out that they were interested in a formal presentation, and I did come prepared for such an eventuality even though they didn't ask for one in advance, I gave my "If Not A, Then E" powerpoint presentation about general semantics and media ecology.

It went over pretty well, my talk and the session overall. Here are the three of us after the session:

And here I'm posing with some of the other participants and organizers:

Octavio, Fernando, and I were invited back up for the concluding session:

And that about sums up my activity south of the border, or at least what I could find from photographs others posted on Facebook, and I am grateful to all those who shared their images.  But here's one final one, taken after the conference, when a few of us were treated to a little tour of downtown Puebla on the day before Mexico's Independence Day:

That about sums it up, don't you think?