He calls television cool (keep in mind that he's talking about television of the '60s, where the picture really was considerably lower-res than it is today; it would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on HDTVs) not just because the picture is fuzzier, but because the viewing process is more involved: You're providing an enormous amount of context, whether you realize it or not, every time you flip the switch on, just knowing what, for example, newscasters are talking about. Moreover, because of what you're providing, it makes for a different experience -- consider that one does not, generally, leave a movie playing in the background while one does other things around the house; but people leave the TV on all the time. It feels like having company, and it's obviously not because the people on TV are any different from the people in a movie; it's because you bring something different, mentally, to the process. You can listen to TV without really watching, or have a conversation while it's on, which are both much harder to do with a movie. And then there's channel-flipping.

You're right about the terms being less than rigorously defined (he copped to as much, frequently). All I can say is that having read him for about a decade now, I feel like the study has paid off -- I get what he's saying, and what he's saying jibes with what I see in the world around me. You're right about the decentering, too, but that's built into his work: He'd say about contemporary analytics, I think, that it's the clear result of a typography-based mind-set -- you want to line everything up precisely, put everything in its right place. (Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the CA, and please correct me.) And while he was a huge fan of that mind-set, he'd note that what seems like clear, linear logic and common sense to you doesn't necessarily obtain in the rest of the world. It's not relativism -- it's just that there are differences we're usually not conscious of in how people in different cultures' brains work. (McLuhan could have told you not just six but ten or twenty years ago that "bringing" democracy to Iraq wouldn't work, for example.) And the only way to make those clear is to shake the brain up a little.

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And all that context you say is at play in television viewing was certainly present when you watched the Watchmen movie. You in fact addressed you inability to view the movie without the context of the comic book. There's the context of American history-- the line about how America would have changed if we'd lost Vietnam is dependent on the context that we did lose Vietnam. The soundtrack brings in a lot of context as well, bringing a sense of nostalgia that would be impossible if we weren't already familiar with all the songs Snyder chose to use.

CA is enamored of precision in terms of defining their vocabulary and concepts. But not only are CA very aware that their notion of common sense doesn't line up with the rest of the world, but they're aware that their methods aren't effective outside of math and science. They don't venture into ethics or politics, and they would never have said anything about bringing democracy to Iraq-- Chomsky holds to a lot of CA ideas and methods and he certainly never said so. And his political opinions are in an entirely different space than his scientific investigations into language.

CA philosophers have held entirely opposing views, many of which McLuhan would agree with. Wittgenstein, for instance, came to the conclusion that most philosophical debates have continued without resolution for years because they were basically cognitive misfires. CA philosophers are also hyper-aware of theory-ladenness, which is basically a way of saying that if theory informs your experiments of analysis, your methods of experiments and analysis are probably not going to be as objective as is ideal. For instance, it was Karl Popper who said no scientific theory can ever be regarded as proven, but only as not yet disproven. And it was the Duhem-Quine thesis that said the method of disproving theories relies on a presumption of proven facts, so that theories that have been disproven might yet hold scientific weight if the proven facts underlying their infirmation turn out not to be true.

So, basically, although CA philosophers value rigor and precision in their methods, they are quite aware of the flaws in their thinking. And things are not lined up and in their place-- the end result of the CA mathematical philosophers was that there's an infinity of mathematical systems whose axioms don't rely on tautology-- that is, an infinity of mathematical systems with contradictory truths within themselves. They just haven't given up on the pursuit of a certain kind of truth and a resolution to the great philosophical debates. Unless you're a Wittgensteinian. Which I am. The main thing I see with postmodernists/continentalists/whatever McLuhan is, is they've given up on any sort of consensus or proof or truth, and just play around with the language and destructuring to get meaning, but meaning that isn't pinned down. Which is fun, I guess. But CA meaning is no more pinned down; every term used is also subject to debate, its just a debate where everyone is on the same page and knows how each philosopher has used each term, and are speaking to other people who are also familiar with the history.

Does this exclude a lot of people? Yes. But this kind of philosophy was never regarded as anything other than a study and discourse by particular kinds of experts. On the other hand, the pomo/continental/whatever philosopers don't seem to admit that their discourse excludes as many people as the CA philos do. There's plenty of Americans that couldn't read that stuff, much less a person from a different culture. As much decentering and playing and infirming as goes on their, it's still highly Westernized decentering and playing and infirming.

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As far as going to the theater, etc., goes, I'm pretty sure McLuhan would point out that those things are actually part of the medium. The phrase "the medium is the message," after all, refers not just to the fundamental technology itself, but to how that technology's effect on our behavior.

And I guess part of the reason I don't see McLuhan as what comes to mind when I hear "postmodernist" is that he was trying to get at some answers that could be pinned down. His book Laws of Media reflects an attempt to do exactly that, in fact. Too, while he was obviously writing for a Western, English-speaking audience (which I think is fair, since he was an English-speaking Westerner), his material reflects a total awareness of that bias. I mean, you could make a strong case that that's ultimately the theme of Understanding Media.

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However, I was thinking about this whole cultural incommensurability thing, and realized: science and math are actually really fantastic at transcending cultural bounds. Anyone, no matter their language or culture or whatever, is capable of being on the same page with math and science-- go to MIT and you'll see an international smorgasbord. And yet the mentality seems to be that typographical mindset of lining things up and having them precisely just so-- practicing scientists and mathemeticians are very resistant to things like Godel's theorem being of any practical importance. Just funny how that works out.

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Anyway, I can see how the diary works for other people. As someone mentioned above, it is a noir-film conceit. I guess I just found it jarring used in conjunction with all the other styles going on in the movie, whereas in the comic, it felt seamless blended in.

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I think the nipples are because it's so cold in Antarctica.

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