MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND UNDERSTANDING IMPACT

We are in the midst of revolution. The world is changing so rapidly that although we think we see the world around us, the world is changing right before our eyes... right now. A serious question faces us as educators. How relevant is the past? Do we cling to the past because it created us as we are? Does this past image (and sound) of ourselves prevent us from seeing and hearing ourselves in the immediacy of the present?

 Marshall McLuhan predicted this paradigmatic shift in the 1970s and the media revolution has succeeded in transforming the culture and moving us away from a culture of point to a culture of media, creating what he described as the "global village," as he proclaimed "the medium is the message."


 When we examine what constitutes the materials and ideas we try to communicate to our students, we are confronted by the challenge that we must learn the past before we advance further. In fact,the past has controlled our curriculum. You must know the history of yourself or you are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

 Yet a new paradigm has emerged that challenges us to create the future--- not from the past but from the energy of newness and discovery. A new creature has evolved. Generations are separated by an evolutionary process that separates young and old. This has always been true, but Time is so accelerated that the separations are more distant and defined.

 Yet consciousness transcends these barriers and situates the moment as the fullness of awareness and experience. Education becomes a term, perhaps antiquated and captured by the past. Education is replaced by conscious awareness that spontaneously knows and understands in an unending kaleidoscope of discovery. The Past and the Future are consumed in the fullness of knowing at the point of discovery.

 In some ways, the new technologies empower us to know the world in the presence of now. We can see ourselves, imagine ourselves, and transform ourselves in the media of conscious awareness. Does anything exist without our awareness of it?