To say that "the camera cannot lie" is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practised in its name.
Marshall McluhanRead
In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes how new ideas in large industries are often quickly criticized or rejected, likening the process to eliminating harmful threats.
Marshall McLuhan's quote highlights the tendency of big industries to be resistant to innovation. He compares the management of ideas within these companies to a laboratory where potentially harmful concepts are quickly identified and suppressed, suggesting that the fear of change can stifle creativity and progress. This perspective warns about the dangers of environments that do not foster new thinking and the societal implications of such practices.
Themes
InnovationIndustryIdeasResistanceCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
In a business meeting discussing the importance of fostering creativity, one might say, 'As McLuhan noted, new ideas in big industry are often clobbered at once.'
More from Marshall Mcluhan
All quotes →A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
Marshall McluhanRead
The news automatically becomes the real world for the TV user and is not a substitute for reality, but is itself an immediate reality.
Marshall McluhanRead
Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.
Marshall McluhanRead
The poet, the artist, the sleuth, whoever sharpens our perception tends to antisocial; rarely 'well adjusted,' he cannot go along with currents and trends.
Marshall McluhanRead
We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.
Marshall McluhanRead
Similar quotes
No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?
James D. WatsonRead
Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.
Stephen HawkingRead
Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem.
Paul NurseRead
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.
Edward WittenRead
One can get a proper insight into the practice of flying only by actual flying experiments. . . . The manner in which we have to meet the irregularities of the wind, when soaring in the air, can only be learnt by being in the air itself. . . . The only way which leads us to a quick development in human flight is a systematic and energetic practice in actual flying experiments.
Otto LilienthalRead
While consumers may be more shocked by pink slime or the feeding of Prozac to poultry, the routine feeding of millions of pounds of human antibiotics to chickens presents a much graver threat.
Michael GregerRead