Marshall McLuhan on Technology, Subjectivity and ‘the Sex Organs of the Machine World’

Abstract

One of the most predominant arguments in the current arena about new technologies focuses on how an unguarded acceptance of unmitigated technological development is set to alter the very terms by which we define ourselves as human. Increasingly, we are told, the human subject is undergoing a profound alteration into something entirely different; a transformation, moreover, that is largely attributed to widespread technological development. Significantly, this claim relies on the perception that the human being is a non-technological, naturally occurring and unambiguously coherent entity that is upset and distorted by externally originating technological interventions. Yet in Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man ([ 1964 ] 1967) Marshall McLuhan proposes a more unusual configuration of the dynamics between humans and their tools than is generally recognized by this argument. This paper undertakes a textual analysis of McLuhan's analysis of technology as ‘the extensions of man’ to explore how the division between humans and technology holds up in the light of a unique perception of the relationship between them.