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
What are the chances that we will one day discover that DNA has absolutely nothing to do with inheritance? They are effectively zero.
Sam HarrisRead
But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth.
Sally RideRead
Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.
Margaret AtwoodRead
C'este donc par l'étude des mathématiques, et seulement par elle, que l'on peut se faire une idée juste et approfondie de ce que c'est qu'une science.
Auguste ComteRead
What, then, is this blue sky, which certainly does exist, and which veils from us the stars during the day?
Camille FlammarionRead
Researchers keep identifying new species, but they have no idea about the life cycle of a given species or its other hosts. They cut open an animal and find a new species. Where did it come from? What effect does it have on its host? What is its next host? They don't know and they don't have time to find out, because there are too many other species waiting to be discovered and described.
Carl ZimmerRead