Mark Federman

A strategic thinker, Mark Federman has more than twenty-five years' experience in the high-technology industry as executive, manager and consultant spanning disciplines including applied research and development, marketing, sales, operations and strategic leadership. Mark is dedicating much of his time to his current research, namely, developing an emergent model of the "organization of the future" that is consistent with our present conditions of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity, or "UCaPP."  Until recently Mark played the role of Chief Strategist at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, and continues his private consulting practice. He is the author (with Derrick de Kerckhove) of McLuhan for Managers - New Tools for New Thinking, published in September, 2003 by Viking Books. 

During his time at the McLuhan Program, Mark taught the Mind, Media and Society II course - affectionately called "Applied McLuhanistics" - in the winter semester, and is a regular guest lecturer for the Computer Mediated Communications Program at Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation in Jönköping, Sweden. He has also taught Applied McLuhanistics at the Fachhochschule Kiel in Germany, and guest lectured at various universities. 

Mark wrote the McLuhan Program weblog from January 2003 to July 2005. Mark's current weblog is What is the (Next) Message? in which he uses a McLuhan lens to observe the world, as well as conduct a conversation about his ongoing research interests.

For his engaging and thought-provoking style, Mark is a frequently sought writer, speaker, and facilitator. In addition to his research and teaching, Mark consults as a strategy advisor to companies and government helping them to gain awareness, perception and insight into complex issues in an environment of continual change.

Completed

Mark's recently completed research is Role* - Reconceptualizing role and relationship in the workplace. Role* realigns the traditional understanding of "role" in terms of sets of behaviours, and their effects on relationships, interactions and interpersonal dynamics, as perceived and actualized from the standpoint of the individual. Understanding one's role* brings significant clarity and a sense of consistency to otherwise disparate and confusing facets of work/life. Both a synopsis of the theoretic and empirical work, as well as a variety of more accessible writings on Role* are available for download.

Current

Mark's current research is concerned with the observation that almost all of our contemporary organizational forms, be they corporate, institutional, governmental or even virtual, are primarily based on the Industrial Age artefact of a bureaucratic hierarchy of power and control. Contemporary management practices are either direct descendents of, or have been co-opted by, Tayloristic principles of scientific management. These are systemic and pervasive throughout our society, and in particular, dominant in management pedagogy. They are supported by current "measures of goodness," such as profitability and market capitalization.

We are, however, no longer in the industrial age; ours is an epoch characterized by multi-way, instantaneous communications. The societal effects of contemporary modes of electronically-mediated interaction have been diversely documented, as have specific organizational effects for good and for ill in a complex environment. What is unique about the beginning of the twenty-first century is that, on one hand, many people are experiencing for the first time the effects of always being connected to some form of multi-way communications. On the other hand, a large and growing demographic have never not known such connectivity: today's youth and tomorrow's adults live in a world of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity (UCaPP). Everyone is, or soon will be, connected to everyone else, and all available information, through instantaneous, multi-way communication. This is ubiquitous connectivity. They will therefore have the experience of being immediately proximate to everyone else and to all available information. This is pervasive proximity.

Drawing a metaphor from atomic science that serves to capture essential aspects of mutual, binding and exchange relationships, Mark proposes a Valence Theory of Organization that describes the various relationships or valences - the capacity to connect, unite, react, or interact - among individuals and organizations, the latter now provisionally defined as "those emergent forms resulting from two or more individuals, or two or more organizations, or both, that share multiple valences at particular strengths, with particular pervasiveness, among its component elements." Certain valences come quickly to mind based on common experience and certain literature that has attempted to account for organizational behaviour. These include relationships that are economic, socio-psychological, knowledge, identity, and ecological in nature

Additionally, Mark is working with Prof. Marilyn Laiken to develop an online learning environment for the adult learner, with the objective of creating the type of multiple topologies of collaboration and engagement that are characteristic of Marilyn's in-person seminars.

• One of the big challenge questions for any about-to-be-newly-minted professor is "describe your teaching philosophy." Mark described his in a five-part series of posts entitled, Reflections of an Adult Educator, part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five. Everything you need to know about Mark's pedagogical philosophy is there, except, perhaps, how he enacts it. For that, you need to attend one of his seminars. Complete with music. And sometimes dancing. And definitely comedy. And a veritable smorgasbord for thought.
• Mark has been meditating on his thesis research lately, and on the process of thesis itself. Out of these contemplations comes The Tao of Thesis:

  To sustain yourself through the sometimes lonely years of work, periods of self-doubt and insecurity, and the occasional bouts of frustration and irrelevancy, you must first find the passion in your research — if even you are not interested in your topic, neither will be anyone else. Ideally, you will discover a question that is so compelling that it permeates your consciousness, and informs your entire experience of the world. You will view the world and your entire existence through research-coloured glasses. The thesis process becomes less an effort to find answers, and more a vehicle through which you can live your question.

• As preparation for several different sets of playshops and playshop training, Mark has written a short introduction to McLuhan's vocabulary, the laws of media tetrads, and their use in tetrad-enabled brainstorming. In essence, he asks the fundamental question for enhanced perception and cognition: What Haven't You Noticed Lately? 

Many aspects that make up your ground also contribute to the ground of people with whom you associate, work, play, and collectively make meaning in the world - or at least, the small part of the world that you inhabit. The problem is that most of us take all those ground aspects for granted. In particular, we typically don't recognize the effects that these various ground aspects have on us, on those around us with whom we interact, and on our collective perception, interpretation and understanding of the things that we do notice. Our entire purpose in using these new methods in perception and thinking is to reveal these hidden or unnoticed aspects. In making these various ground aspects explicit, it becomes possible to observe previously unnoticed effects, and how they might affect us.

• Mark was invited to give the keynote address at SEARCH Canada's biennial conference of medical research networks in Alberta. He was specifically asked to address the idea that our current conception of evidence-based research is limited in its scope of what can be discovered. To that end, he created a talk entitled, How Do We Know: The changing culture of knowledge. In it, he poses some interesting questions:

  How did we as a culture come to decide that certain things are to be considered as knowledge and others are not? How did those that decide such things acquire that very privileged position of knowledge authority? The fact of the matter is that our dominant knowledge paradigm has existed for a very long time – since the 17th century. But the world has changed considerably since then, so I’d like to suggest to you this morning that perhaps it is time to consider some changes to what we consider as knowledge, and who gets to decide, in a way that is consistent with today’s reality.

• Mark recently had the opportunity to take his new Valence Theory for a "test run" in front of an audience of CEOs in New York City. Generation Gap: Why Today's Youth are Living in Tomorrow's World describes how we are now facing a generation gap of historic proportion, the nature of which has only been seen twice before in 3000 years. It almost goes without saying that every aspect of our society is changing in profound ways, including business and how we manage and structure organizations. "Generation Gap" provides the context that allows executives and managers to understand precisely what the changes are, and why they are occurring, and offers a framework and vocabulary to develop management strategies that are consistent with what is actually happening right now. After experiencing "Generation Gap," the way you think about your business will never be the same.
• Mark's recently completed research is summarized in this  Role* Thesis Synopsis that outlines the theoretical foundation of the work, the empirical methodology, as well as the findings and potential applications. The thesis evaluation enthused, "Mark has written a remarkably erudite thesis based on a combination of heuristic, feminist and action research to examine the concept of role* as it relates to motivation and job satisfaction in the workplace. Given the current state of stress - including organizational life - this critical, yet constructive, piece of research provides a unique construct that makes an important contribution to knowledge in this area."
• Why Johnny and Janey Can't Read, and Why Mr. and Ms. Smith Can't Teach is the lecture Mark gave to the University of Toronto Senior Alumni Association. In it, Mark introduces the notion that our beloved literacy is now nothing but a quaint notion, an aesthetic form that is as irrelevant to the real questions and issues of pedagogy today as is recited poetry – clearly not devoid of value, but equally no longer the structuring force of society. He asks readers and listeners to consider that our society's obsessive focus on literacy would doom future generations to oblivion and ignorance, if only they cared a whit about what, and how, we think. Further, he challenges the assumptive ground upon which our institutions of education - primary, secondary and tertiary - are built, and raise the real question of our time - and of any time - namely, what is valued as knowledge, who decides, and who is valued as authority.
• Touching Culture is the panel talk Mark gave at a UNESCO-sponsored conference on ICT and Creativity in Vienna in June, 2005.
• Marshall McLuhan's laws of media represent a distillation of much of the thinking and technique that pervades the body of his work. Indeed, the laws of media, composed as four probes in appositional "tetrad" form - enhancement, reversal, obsolescence and retrieval - have been used across many disciplines and fields of human endeavour to analyze unperceived (or as yet unrealized) effects of the things we conceive and create.  By examining the narrative arc of McLuhan's work from Understanding Media in 1964 through Laws of Media in 1988 through the analytic lens of Menippean satire, and retrieving McLuhan's early work on the five divisions of classical rhetoric, we reveal the hidden ground that is the The Fifth Law of Media: What current medium does the new medium "put on," or satirize? Speaking of Marshall McLuhan, two of Mark's more popular downloads are available here: On Reading McLuhan provides newcomers to McLuhan's work with a (relatively) sane approach to leaning how to read his works, so that they can be truly understood. And, Mark answers the question, What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message? in both downloadable pdf, and htm forms. 
• The Salzburg Research Institute held its eCulture Horizons conference in September, 2004. Mark Federman's opening keynote, The Ephemeral Artefact looks at some of the cultural effects of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity.
• How to Determine the Business You're Really In is Mark's talk for the alumni of Rotman School of Management at the U of T that describes how to use McLuhan thinking to become truly aware of business environment. To be able to perceive 21st century dynamics is to change the tools with which we perceive the world and thereby restructure the way we think about our business, thereby creating a culture of innovation and an environment of noticing.
• Mark's talk for the School of Continuing Studies University Lecture Series, Integral Awareness in the Connected Society, describes how McLuhan's Laws of Media can be used to create a "cognitive anti-environment" of awareness and insight, and introduces "publicy" as the reversal of individual privacy in our interconnected society. Find out why a "knowledge-powered, open source economy" can create a sustainable economic infrastructure for the 21st century.
• Management Hot and Cool (Excerpt from McLuhan for Managers) is reprinted in the Winter 2004 edition of Rotman Management magazine. The excerpt introduces the notion of Hot and Cool managers.
•  An expanded version of The Cultural Paradox of the Global Village that Mark Federman recently presented at the Localization World conference in Seattle. This version adds the notion of Globalism and reflexivity of the global citizen in the era of new modernity. Another variation on this topic is The Global Soul and the Global Village, that incorporates writer Pico Iyer's ideas from his book The Global Soul.
• Enterprise Awareness, McLuhan Thinking is the opening keynote Mark delivered at the 2003 Information Highways conference.
• Listening to the Voice of the Customer is the luncheon keynote speech to the Conference Board of Canada's conference on Customer Relationship Management, November, 2001.