Rebounds in Communication Cultures: Scanning Through McLuhan’s Maxims

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Abstract

This paper attempts to comprehend the thesis of digitization of communication that has paradoxically created a saga of bouncing back of the “pre-parenthetic” oral age in the “post-parenthesis” advancement that scholars associate with our “post-modern” culture. How did Marshal McLuhan once predict that saga through his maddening media maxim of “cyber perception” more than 60 years ago that Roy Ascott (1994, 2007) called “cyberception”? Scholars understand that “parenthetical” culture of communication (viewed as a result of Gutenberg press) was dominated by the stable states, individuals, and groups in a canonical composition. The pre-parenthetical culture of communication which was primarily oral and folkloric in nature—happened within the world of traditional communities. Now, into the twenty-first century, images, reality entertainment, social media, and online chats nearly resemble the pre-Gutenberg era since they are mostly mediated in the re-creative, collective, con-textual, and unstable forms—almost like traditional culture.

Author

• Zainul Abedin, Mississippi Valley State University