NOT JUST A DWELLING, NOT JUST A "MACHINE": THE CONCEPT OF HOUSING AS AN EXTENSION OF MAN ACCORDING TO M. MCLUHAN AND NOT ONLY

Abstract

The article examines the transformations in the relationship between human beings and dwelling in the context of technological progress from the beginning of the twentieth century to the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The theoretical framework is based on Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, with particular emphasis on the concept of the “extensions of man.” It is argued that technological development has profoundly transformed forms of human existence, social relations, and modes of communication, while the dwelling has retained its fundamental significance not only as a material structure but also as a social, cultural, and symbolic construct. From this perspective, the study traces the changing meanings of home, native dwelling, and the family hearth in the digital age, with particular attention to the emergence of the “smart home.”

Special attention is devoted to reconsidering McLuhan’s “new outlook and new worldview” more than half a century after the publication of Understanding Media. Whereas the ascetic lifestyle exemplified by Diogenes of Sinope has never become a dominant social model, contemporary global trends increasingly associate well-being and happiness with technologically enhanced living environments. The twenty-first-century home is conceptualized as a multifunctional space that integrates residential, recreational, and professional activities. The article demonstrates the cyclical transformation of workplaces: from the traditional coexistence of living and working spaces, through their separation during the Industrial Revolution, to the contemporary return of work into the home through remote and digital labor.

The article also explores the traditional Ukrainian house, examining its cultural meanings and symbolic functions. It analyzes how, during the second half of the twentieth century, television, followed by stereo and video systems, personal computers, and smartphones, gradually reshaped domestic space, transforming interpersonal communication while simultaneously fostering individualization and social isolation. The study further considers possible future developments of housing in the digital era, including concepts of homes equipped with interactive interface walls and electronic windows, as well as futuristic projects envisioning human habitation on the Moon and Mars.

In addition, the article examines Valerian Pidmohylnyi’s urban novel The City as a literary representation of the process through which a rural individual appropriates and internalizes urban space. It analyzes the phenomenon of the “conquest” of the city by a non-native protagonist, whose search for identity is accompanied by an increasing rupture with rural life, nature, and traditional modes of existence. The study argues that the acquisition of urban identity, housing, and social status is inseparable from the loss of deeper existential ties to one’s origins. It concludes that urbanization and technological modernization transform not only the spatial organization of everyday life but also the fundamental ways in which home, privacy, and identity are experienced. A century after the publication of Pidmohylnyi’s novel, the question of what individuals and societies are willing to sacrifice in order to “conquer” the city and technological civilization remains as relevant as ever.