Inspector Gadget: On McLuhan and Media as Human Extension

This post has been provided by Amir Mokhtari and is subject to copyright.

Marshall McLuhan, simply known as #mcluhan, can be recognized as one of the most controversial philosophers and thinkers of all time. McLuhan was the first who evolved the understanding of the media industry and opened up totally a new window to what nowadays we know and comprehend as #media, #marketing, and #advertising as well. Just before McLuhan emerged, media science was isolated and wrapped up through the bunch of abstract, and intellectual concepts that the most practical face of it can be found in Frankfurt School.

Media and its rules were hidden in the dark, God said Let There Be McLuhan, and then there was light. (Amir Mokhtari)

Thanks to Marshall McLuahn, we know to deal with media science, in a more practical, analytical, and most important, EFFECTIVE way.

But for McLuhan’s sake, What’s the deal with McLuhan and Inspector Gadget??

Marshall McLuhan vs Inspector Gadget

Aside from the brilliant and shining ideas of McLuhan, “Global Village”, “The Medium is the Message”, and “The Medium as Human’s Extension”, are the driving forces behind his thoughts that fueled the media science with fresh blood and momentum. This note aims to wrestle with the last one which the author considers as the divine elaboration of McLuhan.

McLuhan observed the human as a tool creator animal whose desire for ease and comfort has made him seek new means and tools. But more means and media calls for higher intelligence and smarter human being. Here’s the point that has triggered and driven the evolution of human beings.

Media made the human to be proud of themselves as smart animals (Amir Mokhtari)

In another word, #marshall_mcluhan takes human inventions and media nothing fresh and novel, but a smarter copy and extension of the human organ that help certain organ by doing their tasks or serve it to do the task more easily and smartly (from the days of yore, seeking for ease and comfort has been a critical driver to all of the human’s activities and behaviors). This is the most attractive part of the McLuhan theory that can justify all human inventions and creations. For instance, in this fashion, eyeglasses can be known as eye extensions for what serves the eye by loading its task and helping it to do its task faster and better. (There are also other sides and dimensions to this theory but for the sake of simplicity and avoiding the divergence from the main topic of Inspector Gadget, the other parts will be covered in future stories).

But the story goes further… The new medium calls for a new balance between senses and the new balance calls for a new human that creates a new environment to bring him new ideas, and medium. So the new human is going to find a new shape, bringing new types of thinking, leading to a new form of human behavior and mind, and at last a new world.

Inspector Gadget is a kind of metaphor that the author has employed and exploited to wrap up all the mentioned stories, in a solid, believable, and feasible formation that is so in love and touch with all human beings (at least those who recognize Inspector Gadget). The Inspector Gadget metaphor for McLuhan’s theory of “Medium as Human Extension“, is suggested for the first time on this note and a same-name book written and published by Amir Mokhtari.

From Primate to Gadget

This theory suggests an ideal version of a human being whose desire for comfort, control, and convergence, combined, has evolved into a Cyborg armed with different types of human extensions around him. Despite the fantasy expression of Inspector Gadget, the author (Amir Mokhtari) take it as a solid sample of human beings (at least in the same fashion that Marshall McLuhan dealt with Comic Strips and Pop-culture) and a warning prototype of the human himself which shall not be simply ignored. Inspector Gadget is the bright side of the story if it does not come to an end with Terminator Sequel…..From this point of discussion, I deeply believe that there are yet more stories to come on the rough road of human evolution…