The DEW-Line deck of cards takes as its point of departure that artists (the creative consciousness) are a sort of cultural DEW-Line that warns of changes to arrive shortly. They can do so because they keep their senses (their radar, to ride the metaphor to staggers) well-tuned: that is the main business of any serious artist.
Distant Early Warning Deck
1969 by Marshall McLuhan
© U.S. Registration No. A 115491
Distant Early Warning Cards
Prepared by Eric McLuhan
The DEW-Line was a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the North Coast and Aleutian Islands of Alaska, in addition to the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It was set up to detect incoming Soviet bombers during the Cold War, and provide early warning of any sea-and-land invasion:
The DEW-Line deck of cards takes as its point of departure Ezra Pound’s remark, “Artists are the antennae of the race [sic].” Artists are a sort of cultural DEW-Line that warns of changes to arrive shortly. They can do so because they keep their senses (their radar, to ride the metaphor to staggers) well-tuned: that is the main business of any serious artist.
The deck of cards exemplifies the probe technique. Each card is a way to probe a situation of the user’s choosing, a way to come at it from unexpected directions, real outside-the-box work. The cards function as a problem-solving device, a bottleneck-breaker.
The cards use techniques of poetics instead of those of rationality and logic. In The Book of Probes, I called the probe “poetics on the warpath.” Play is the quickest way out of an uptight situation. To use the deck, shuffle the cards well and focus your mind on the matter you wish to probe. Then deal yourself two or three cards, and relate each one to your subject. Take your time: irrationality is an essential ingredient to solution, and there’s lots of it here. If you MUST, shuffle the deck well once again and deal yourself another pair of cards… Generally, a solution appears on the first deal. If you find the quips on the cards annoying, so much the better: they are wake-up calls.
It took several weeks to come up with suitable probes (the words on the face of each card). They were not composed at random, though they work when they are used randomly.
It looks somewhat chaotic, but that is the surface. There is a good system under the surface. If you would see the patterns, line the cards up on a table in a column four-wide, with each vertical row a complete suit, King through Ace. Then scan across the lines. Each group of four has a distinct theme.
[Footnote: the team of creators consisted of Marshall McLuhan, Eric McLuhan, Harley Parker, George Thompson, and various visitors to the Centre for Culture and Technology. The card deck came with the July 1969 issue (vol. 2, no.1) of the McLuhan DEW-Line Newsletter]
[It‘s important to note that Ezra Pound was a fascist and Nazi-sympathizer and heavy promoter of terribly racist perspectives. The text represented above is verbatim from the documents included with the DEW-Line project and maintained here as a historical document, not the view in any way of Near Future Laboratory.]
Enclosed with this Issue of the Dew-Line Newsletter is something completely unique - an intellectual’s card deck! This deck was expressly designed for the Dew-Line by Marshall McLuhan and Harley Parker as much more than a mere game or exercise in wit. It was designed to use and illustrate one of the most effective of the many techniques for obtaining insight and discovery - the technique of juxtaposition.
With this very POSH deck one can take a cool trip into exotic regions. (POSH - Portside Out, Starboard Home - enabled the visitor to the Orient to play it cool.)
Although with this deck most card games can be played, it is unlikely that it can be used to play poker, for no-one could for long maintain a “poker face”
Here in this deck is the possibility of exploring our world in action. For, juxtaposed with the conventional games are many other media games from the environment both verbal and pictorial-iconic.
This deck makes possible a conversational card game in which the players do not deal in the usual exchange of gossip but rather play across the table with the wisdom and / or wit embodied in the aphorisms from many fields. As would be true in the East, what is important in any given “hand” of cards is not just the identity of the cards, but the varied relationships and juxtapositions of cards (and aphorisms), and not only within the hand, but also between players.
The deck contains the idea of the interplay of minds concerned with the new manipulation of the current (or of a past) environment. This inclusive kind of Monopoly is by way of being a game game.
The flood of new awareness and discovery may compel the player to keep in touch with his brokers and his managers. Many players will be able to create new games on the basis of this multi-media approach. In that event we would be pleased to hear about them.
RULES OF THE GAME
In addition to the conventional card games, the Dew Line deck performs as THE MANAGEMENT GAME. Proceed as follows:
(a) Take any card. Relate the aphorism to your current hang-up.
(b) Call to mind a private or corporate problem as you shuffle the cards. Select a card and apply its message.
(c) Take three cards. Experiment with different arrangements of these until they yield new insights and patterns in your problem.
(d) Deal yourself three cards. Pick a pair to maximize the comic side of your problem.
TO OBTAIN YOUR SCORE
(1) If you get your breakthrough in thirty seconds or less, you are a top Dew Liner!
(2) Those who get their million dollar solution in less than two minutes have not yet been promoted to the level of their incompetence.
(3) If it takes you three minutes or more, try another problem.
Contributors
Biography
Herbert Marshall McLuhan CC (/məˈkluːən/, mə-KLOO-ən; July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as the “father of media studies”. McLuhan coined the expression “the medium is the message” in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.Publisher
McLuhan DEW-Line NewsletterSpecifications
Size 2.5 x 3.5in - Poker Size CardsNotes
- Sent as a gift from Andrew McLuhan at The McLuhan Institute
- Card deck came with the July 1969 issue (vol. 2, no.1) of the McLuhan DEW-Line Newsletter
- Contemporary to and preceding the noted ‘Oblique Strategies’ deck of cards from 1975 by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. Read my wondering about the confluence and what it has to imply about the particular cultural moment in which these were created.
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