Shaggadelic, baby ...

so if its traditional, the OLs where you work gave you giri-choko today?

I took the day off, gave wifey some choko (Love American Style) and we went to dinner in Omotesando (Pariya - yummy). Saw some plusminuszero showroom (overpriced craptacular "design" products) and the new Epson showroom (they are entering the projection LCD TV marketspace).

i'm not so sure this is good "trivia"..

Now for something completely different...

Hey, congrats, heard your song on WFMU today. You followed the great Biz Markie! See the playlist here: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/14181.

Well done. Quite catchy, indeed. Perhaps you should plug your music a bit more on this site. Would be interested in reading about the process of creation, too.

Hey, congrats, heard your song on WFMU today.

Well, look at that. Thanks for letting me know about that.

Sorry to nitpick, but if I remember correctly (and it's many years since I've read Understanding Media and The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan defined television as a cool medium.

I have to admit I remember finding his application of the concept of temperature to media not very principled. His books are fun to read though.

I have to admit I remember finding his application of the concept of temperature to media not very principled.

It's pretty random. I read it over a couple of weeks ago very slowly to see if I could figure it out, but he's just totally insane. That's to say: he doesn't write like a social scientist, he writes like a novelist.

Television is indeed a "cool" medium, but film is a "hot" medium. If someone can explain to me how they differ, I would be very happy. Is a Twin Peaks movie shown on television hot or cool?

i don't know what makes TV "cool". but if TV is cool. then movies are no question "hot".. they are just a bigger deal.. an "event".. i mean just saying "made for tv movie" sounds lame.. you know its going to be lame.. plus we could argue the theories behind 29.97 FPS [60 half frames a sec] and films 24 FPS.. and the effects it has on how we preseave the images.

Television is indeed a "cool" medium, but film is a "hot" medium. If someone can explain to me how they differ, I would be very happy. Is a Twin Peaks movie shown on television hot or cool?

Two main thoughts occur to me on this:

(1) I believe that 'hot' and 'cool' have something to do with the 'interactivity' or participation demanded from the media consumer, or 'user' in today's parlance. TV was classified as 'cool' because it required the viewer to 'fill in' information, a participatory act. This seems to have had something to do with actual technological nature of the television of those days which was rather lower quality than film. Given that TV has greatly improved in image quality, it's much closer to film. I have a friend who was a TV cameraman in Toronto in the early days of television and he told me that, at first, it was all done live. This is rather different from film. There was a very interesting stage of conversion between media. So the TV of McLuhan's time may have been quite different from what we think of as TV now.

(2) One view is that McLuhan was being poetic. Another is that he was a cunning self-promoter and guru wannabe. What better way to get people to discuss your ideas than to spin out memes that almost make sense? Cool in medium indeed. But effective in getting people to think about and discuss media.

That was meant to read Cool in the medium a probably obscure reference to an old Martha and the Muffins song.

Hot or cool do indeed have to do with user interactivity, which why I was confused about the difference between film and current tv drama. I think you're right about the rise in technology compared to early 60s programming. So, if that's true, TV is now a "hot" medium, no?

Another is that he was a cunning self-promoter and guru wannabe.

This is also highly plausible, but he came from a very literary background and not social science. His media theory is more like literary theory about media than necessarily social science. But he's very guru before the huge wave of guru-ism in the late 60s. Proto-guru?

McLuhan's mentor at UT was a very influential economist. Can't recall his name off the top of my head. Thus the strong social science background.
At Cambridge he was affiliated with one of the foremost literary critics of the day.

McLuhan's one of those guys who is difficult to classify. Also he's from an era that produced some great Canadian thinkers. Not to say that doesn't happen anymore. Just that most of them are somewhere else - usually the USA. Perhaps recent politics will reverse the talent flow.

Oh yes ... compared to the internet everything seems hot. Oh no ... we're falling into McLuhan's gobbledygook. There's something very seductive about this nonsense. Maybe it has something to do with the origins of religious cults.

Perhaps recent politics will reverse the talent flow.

Actually with any luck, recent politics will actually introduce some new thinking into academia. From what I've seen things the last twenty years have marked a great decrease in the ammount of actual thinking occurring in US universities, but that has less to do with any clever thinkers leaving the US than with clever people leaving academia. This is a whole nother topic tho and I think I've said too much because if this goes on, in comparison to most everyone else here I'd end up looking like the dyed in the wool Reganaut I'm not.

Actually with any luck, recent politics will actually introduce some new thinking into academia.

It might be instructive to take a look at what happened in academia in Germany in the 1930's and keep a watchful eye for changes in the American academic system.