McLuhan, Mailer, 1968

Mailer, McLuhan, 1968, a CBS talking show program titled “The Summer Way” and Google Video. Web serendipity strikes again, or always, or…hmm…I’m sure McLuhan would find another way to express it.
But one fav quote from the show:
McLuhan (around minute 10:00): “There is in IBM for example a phrase that “Information overload produces pattern recognition.” . . . When you give people too much information they instantly resort to pattern recognition, in other words, to structuring the experience.”
This is somewhat out of context, but isn’t that the beauty of McLuhan? and of the web? We can find enough data to form recognizable patterns, patterns which probably most often fit our preconceptions and presuppositions. McLuhan resonates with the web-minded for what he says, certainly, but how much of that resonance is for how he expresses his ideas. That is, does the way he uses language lend itself to sound bytes and quotes that are generalizable to a whole host of ideas? Is he the perfect scholarly resource–endless ideas or arguments can be built around his expressions not because of what he actually says but because of the way he says it?
At any rate, for a fascinating half hour watch this discussion. For their thoughts, for their speech patterns, for the 60s culture that peeps out glaringly or subtly, or just for the fun of it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-931331993788973594&q=norman+mailer+marshall+mcluhan&ei=qdeNSP2iDYmS4wKujoGSCA