In his widely read and controversial book, "Die Magischen Kanäle", the Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan presents a number of thoughts, which – regarding the theory of energons – are remarkable.

McLuhan – so to speak – skips the theory of evolution – in so far as he presents the extension of the human body by the totality of technical means virtually as taken for granted. His interest is in the repercussions of the effects on the "psychological and social structures" of human societies, and mankind as a whole.

After the "technical age", marked by the division of labour and increasing specialisation, we have now entered the "electrical age". Because of electricity, the human nervous system experienced an immense widening: because of this new medium, the human being became more and more closely connected with all humanity. McLuhan writes: "After 3000 years of the extension of specialisation by the technical extension of our bodies, our world seems to be compressing in an opposite development". Because of broadcasting, television, and so on, space and time are almost abolished. "Electrically contracted, the world is only a village any more."

A main thesis of McLuhan is: " The medium is the message". It is not the respective "content" and the respective applicability on the media which is decisive, but the media per se has influence and regulates the forms of the social life of humans. It is not important whether a machine produces cornflakes or cars; the machine per se "changes our relations with one another with ourselves". It is the same with a film "without the relation to its content". The "media" – the extensions of the human body – create a "new standard", they "shift the emphasis in our sensory organisation". The railway led to a "completely new kind of cities, as well of work and spare time". The airplane, with higher acceleration, led "to the elimination of this kind of railway –created cities, politics and society. Every medium – per se – has the power to "impose its postulates on the clueless".

Where is the connection of this concept, here only briefly mentioned, to the energon theory? It is not a question of the repercussions of the artificial organs on the individual to which they belong, but on the whole of society. This is a problem which was not mentioned in this book. Human inventions per se have an influence on society's ways of thinking and hence the behavioural patterns of society which pervade the human beings through tradition and education. The essence of every artificial organ is the basic principle of the totality of its inherent possibilities. It is the essence, which has an effect on the society, which deeply influences and changes it.

McLuhan distinguishes between "hot" and "cold" media: the hot ones have a strong influence, the cold ones a weaker one. About the "hot ones", McLuhan says that they have "destructive power". One of his examples shows clearly what he means by this. "When the Australian aborigines got axes of steel from the missionaries, their culture, which was build upon the axe of stone, broke down. The axe of stone was not only rare, but always a fundamental symbol of patriarchy. The missionaries supplied loads of sharp axes of steel and gave them to woman and children. The men had to borrow them from the women, which led to the loss of their masculine dignity."

Here, the artificial organ "steel axe" turned out to be "hot" – with the major ability to influence and change ways of living.

However, the "hot media" – and this is McLuhan's next thought – experience, as soon as they pass the critical limit, a reversal of their effects. The pendulum of their influence swings to the other extreme. With that, the Western world would move eastwards, the Eastern world would move westwards.

Next, McLuhan deals with the interactions of the different "extensions". It is a "civil war", which happens in our society as well as in the soul of every individual. The artificial organs influence and increase one another. With the combining of different organs, "enormous energy was set free"; there came a multitude of new developments.

Each human extension- – one more idea of McLuhan – leads to a form of numbing of the human being – it makes him dazed, deaf, blind and dumb.

For the central nervous system this extension would have a shock effect, against which it would protect itself with this reaction. The process of self-knowledge would be made more difficult, even impossible. It is a matter of regaining the balance disturbed by the extension.

McLuhan presents his thoughts in a way which justifies many criticisms. The examples he uses to emphasise his thesis are partly far-fetched, too confused and often not suitable to justify his point of view. The natural scientist is made suspicious or is even repulsed by continuing, untenable assertions and generalisations.

Almost on every page, there are thoughts where the association of cause and effect leaves one baffled, to say the least, but which cannot be taken seriously. One often gets the impression that McLuhan deliberate seeks to baffle so as to gain attention.

But I tend to think that McLuhan just presents the world as he sees it, without taking the trouble really to explain his thoughts to an interested person. Thus as well as presenting the "extension of human nature" as something natural and given – although almost everyone until now has seen the limit completely differently – he also leaves out in his descriptions the repercussions of the simpler correlations of and immediately focuses on the more extreme ones, which appear mostly –at least in the way he represents them–not only dubious but also contestable.

If the energon theory should ever find disciples among students of sociology, I would recommend them to make a precise and sober examination of the first 70 pages of the above-mentioned book. I think they represent the right starting point to study the repercussions of artificial organs on human societies, as a key to the connections of their behaviour.

The thought of a "implosion" occurring now and the development of a collective consciousness reminds of the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, but here it is not based on the hope for a "union in love", which is unfortunately an Utopia, but on the concrete fact of a world-wide extension of our sense organs and therefore our central nervous system. In my opinion, it is only fair that after a period of constant increase of power with the addition of additional units to the genetic body of primeval man, now other phenomena are coming to the fore. The repercussions of these artificial extensions and their mutual interactions are becoming more and more decisive for human ways of living, because everybody is becoming deeply and directly connected with everybody else because of the electric mass media. "In the age of electricity, all humanity becomes our skin."
 
 

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