Marshall McLuhan: 1911 – 1980

Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian educator and communications scholar, was born 100 years ago on July 21, 1911. McLuhan became a celebrity in the 1960s for his controversial media studies and peculiar perspective on television and its societal impact.

While you are likely familiar with McLuhan’s aphorism “the medium is the message,” you might not know that he was an expert on printing. Much of his writing deals with print media technology, its history and significance as a cultural form, especially the book. One of his most important titles, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), examines prints’ contribution to the transformation of mankind’s self-image and consciousness during the Renaissance.

McLuhan was among the first to foresee the coming of electronic media. He had a prophetic view of the information age, one that anticipated the World Wide Web and digital publishing. His relevance to modern media studies is shown by the conferences being held worldwide on the centenary of his birth: http://marshallmcluhan.com/.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton, Alberta. His family moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba after World War I. In 1928, Marshall entered the University of Manitoba where earned an MA in English. He went on to the University of Cambridge where he earned a Ph.D. in 1943. Marshall married Corrine Lewis in 1939 and they had six children.

McLuhan and his family moved to Toronto in 1946 where he joined the faculty of St. Michael’s College of the University of Toronto. In the 1950s he began the Communication and Culture seminars, gaining a reputation as a media expert and, in 1963, the university created with him the Centre for Culture and Technology.

McLuhan became internationally known with the publication of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). He advanced the profound idea that “the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” He examined many forms of media: the written word, the printed word, the photograph, the telegraph, the typewriter, the telephone, the phonograph, movies, radio and television and showed how the content of one media is always another media form.

Marshall McLuhan suffered a stroke in 1979 that affected his speech. The University of Toronto attempted to close his research center shortly thereafter but was prevented by protests, most notably by Woody Allen. McLuhan never recovered and died on December 31, 1980.

Marshall McLuhan on the Today Show in September 1976.

Since McLuhan’s theoretical concepts are difficult to explain, I will let him do it himself. Below are quotations taken from TV interviews that can be viewed online.

On “hot” and “cold” media, 1964

“It has to do with the slang phrase ‘the hot and the cool’ … ‘Cool’ in the slang form has come to mean involved, deeply participative, deeply engaged; everything that we had formerly meant by heated … Though the idea that ‘cool’ has reversed its meaning I think has some bearing on the fact that our culture has shifted its stress on the demand that we become more committed, more involved.” http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/?video=SAY_001

On the future of publishing, 1966

“Instead of going out and buying a book of which there have been 5,000 copies printed, you will go to the telephone and describe your interests, your needs, your problems … They will at once Xerox—with the help of computers from the libraries of the world—all the latest material just for you, personally, not as something to be put out on the bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service.” http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/?video=PRO_004

On instantaneous, simultaneous information, 1976

“At the speed of light there is no sequence, everything happens at one instant … We live in a world where everything is supposed to be lineal, one thing at a time, connected and logical, goal oriented. We are now living in a world which pushes the right hemisphere (of the brain) way up … is making the old left hemisphere world—which is our educational establishment, our political establishment—look very foolish.” http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/?video=TEA_007

Admittedly, McLuhan’s academic style and references to historical and cultural artifacts make him difficult to read. However, McLuhan has made a unique contribution to an understanding of media and how they impact the cognitive functions and social organization of man. We should embrace and study Marshall McLuhan as the first philosopher of our multimedia world.

Debating the tipping point: When will digital printing transcend offset?

When I attended GraphExpo2010 in Chicago last fall, I noticed something had changed. For the first time, the largest exhibit spaces—in previous years occupied by offset lithographic presses—had been taken over by the latest digital printing systems.

This seemed to happen suddenly and I wondered: have we reached the tipping point already?

Since the digital printing revolution began in the early 1990s, much has been written and said about its impact on our industry and markets. Books and research studies have been published and conferences and surveys have been held, all to illustrate the transformative effect of the new technology. The opportunities and threats of the disruptive innovation brought by digital printing—personalized, variable, on-demand, data-driven and zero makeready—have been thoroughly discussed.

More recently, the commentary has turned to a debate over the transition point at which digital will displace offset. I have collected examples of this dialogue and focused on those who have been so bold as to prognosticate on the subject.

• In June 2008, Canon Europe published a report called “Digital Printing Directions.” Based on a survey of 619 industry representatives worldwide, the report says: “The global printing industry is at a crossroads. … Digital printing in 2008 is at the point where offset was in 1968.” Next to a graph the report says, “Through 2020, offset will remain a viable process, even as digital printing grows, but after 2020, new digital technology may affect offset the way that offset affected letterpress.”

• In September 2010, NPES (the association for printing, publishing and converting technologies) published details of a study called “Megatrends in Digital Printing Applications.” The study surveyed 900 industry representatives and covered 12 applications: books, catalogs, direct mail, labels, magazines, manuals, marketing collateral, newspapers, packaging and specialty printing. The findings showed that few if any of the 12 applications will tip by 2020 but “the tipping point for most of the applications is decades away, if at all.” The NPES article contains a graph (Chart 2) showing how digital printing, while experiencing 11.3% growth from 2010 to 2014, remains a tiny fraction of total print volume.

• On November 10, 2010, whattheythink.com’s Frank Romano made the following remark in a video entitled “Frank takes a look at when the tipping point for digital may be”: “Offset lithography dragged along for a hundred years and then all of a sudden it found a marketplace and within a decade letterpress was gone.  Now according to the (NPES) research, they say the tipping point for digital printing is decades away … I disagree with that … Now, I don’t think it’s going to take a decade for those two worlds to come very close together.”

Frank Romano
Andy Tribute

• On January 18, 2011, whattheythink.com’s Andy Tribute published a commentary entitled, “When Will Digital Printing Take Over from Offset Printing?” Tribute wrote, “Overall I find that many projections I see for digital printing growth are pretty wild … it will take a long time before the ‘tipping point’ is reached where digital becomes larger than analog printing.”

These are differing predictions on the tempo and scope of the replacement of offset by digital printing. Some say in a decade (or less) and others say it will take longer (two decades or more). Some say total eclipse and others say partial and only in some categories. However, they all agree that the transition is coming.

As we reflect upon the present and the letterpress-to-offset and phototypesetting-to-desktop experiences of our past, keep in mind these key attributes of disruptive innovation: 1.) likelihood of dominant players to fail; 2.) requirement of a new value proposition; 3.) short-term increase in cost per unit, 4.) short-term decrease in quality, and; 5.) long-term tendency toward complete replacement.

For printing companies, these are strategic problems. The relative weight and pace of offset-to-digital within the print markets is not uniform. Therefore, digital adoption rates must be calibrated to meet increasing customer demand while maintaining competitive in offset long enough to exhaust its potential. In other words, companies must plan their own offset-to-digital tipping point to avoid having it foisted upon them the way that offset printing and desktop publishing were adopted.

Ottmar Mergenthaler: 1854 – 1899

Ottmar Mergenthaler, the inventor of the Linotype machine, was born on May 11, 1854. While it may be difficult to appreciate in our era of digital innovation, Mergenthaler’s invention was a momentous achievement that transformed our industry 125 years ago.

Called the “eighth wonder of the world” by Thomas Edison, Mergenthaler’s machine automated and integrated the casting and assembly of type forms; the invention completed the advancement of printing from handcraft to industrial manufacturing.

In the early 19th century, industrial printing came into shape as iron replaced wood in press construction. Cylinders were developed and, with steam power, the rotary press was invented. Meanwhile, the 1800s saw papermaking industrialize and bookbinding convert from handiwork to mass production.

The industrial revolution increased the volume of printing and its output per hour. However, in contrast, there was one critical step that remained primitive, costly and in need of revolutionary change: typesetting.

For centuries, type composition methods remained static. Standing in front of the type case, the compositor manually picked up individually cast metal characters and placed them in sequence—including justification—onto an eight-inch composing stick. Manual typesetting required The New York Times, for example, to maintain a staff 100 compositors … to produce eight-page weekday editions and a twelve-pager on Sundays!

The search to replace the old process—which remained unchanged since Gutenberg’s time—spanned a century and went through more than 100 unsuccessful inventions. As one author wrote, “The story of the many inventors who failed, died broke or took to drink … only serves to dramatize this persistent urge of the human spirit” to leap over an important technological hurdle.

With expectations of a solution on the horizon, investors put up an estimated $10 million between 1865 and 1885 for various schemes. Among them was Mark Twain who sank $190,000 ($7 million in today’s money) into a failed contraption that had 18,000 moving parts.

It took the genius, clarity of vision and persistence of a young German emigrant to America to solve the riddle of mechanical typesetting. Arriving in Baltimore at the age of 18, Ottmar Mergenthaler was looking for an opportunity to pursue his interest in engineering.

In 1876, the young Mergenthaler—who was trained as a watchmaker— was asked to review the apparatus of another inventor. He said, “Even though I know almost nothing about printing, I have little faith that this is the machine to revolutionize an industry.” And with that, he embarked upon the project of his life. After ten years of work and at age 32, Mergenthaler demonstrated his machine publicly for the first time in the offices of The New York Tribune on July 3, 1886.

With his unique arrangement of keyboard, gears, wheels, belts, pulleys, tubes, cables, hoses, trays etc., Mergenthaler integrated a mind-boggling array of functions. At the core of his invention were: 1.) the casting of individual type forms from hot metal; 2.) the assembly of the characters into lines-of-type and; 3.) everything was done by a single operator. You can watch a Model 8 Linotype machine in action by visiting this YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf0hDWOrnWA

By 1895, there were 3,000 machines in use by publishers and printers worldwide. The fast, low cost typesetting led to an expansion of the printed word. In the US, newspapers increased pages, magazines grew in size and frequency, books were printed in greater quantities, libraries multiplied and the illiteracy rate was reduced.

Predictably, Mergenthaler—a technician, not a moneyman—was treated badly by the “publishers syndicate” that financed the development of the Linotype. Expecting rapid and large returns, they forced Ottmar to bring his invention to market before it was ready and manipulated the patent system for their own gain.

Along with other inventors of his generation, Ottmar Mergenthaler exhibited little interest in riches or personal glory. After twenty years of work and following a serious illness, he and his family took their first vacation. Traveling to his hometown in Wurttemberg, Ottmar was greeted with a hero’s welcome. Upon their return to America, however, Ottmar Mergenthaler was diagnosed with TB and, at the age of 45, he died on October 28, 1899.