The Lost Tetrads of Marshall McLuhan 9781682190968, 9781682190975

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OF MARSHALL McLUHAN.” — D O U G L A S R U S H KO F F

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kn own

for

coi ni ng

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ph ra se

“the

m ediu m i s t he m e ss a ge.” Shor t l y b e fo re h i s death , to ge t he r wi t h hi s m e di a sc h o l a r so n

code—alm ost a cross be t we e n hi ero g l y p h i c s an d

poe t r y— t hat

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ca l l e d

“ t he

te t ra d s.”

Th is was t he ul t i m ate t he ore t i ca l f ra mewo r k for an alyz i ng a ny new m e di um , a ko a n - l i ke poetics that transcended traditional means of discou r se. N ow Er i c M cL uha n ha s re cove re d all th e “ l ost ” te t ra ds t hat he a nd h i s fat h e r developed, a nd a ccom pa ni e s t he m h e re w i t h accessibl e ex pl a nat i ons of how t hey f u n c t i o n .

OR Books www.orbooks.com

C OV E R D E S I G N B Y B AT H C AT LT D .

ISBN 978-1-68219-096-8 90000

9 781682 190968

MARSHALL & ERIC McLUHAN

Er ic, McLuha n wor ke d on a new l i te ra r y/v i su a l

THE LOST TETRADS OF MA RS HALL McLU HAN

Mar sh all M cL uha n wa s t he vi s i onar y t h e o r i st

TH E LOST TETRADS

“ T H E T R U E M A S T E RW O R K

MARSHALL & E RIC McLUHAN

OF MARSHALL McLUHAN.” — D O U G L A S R U S H KO F F

best

kn own

for

coi ni ng

t he

ph ra se

“the

m ediu m i s t he m e ss a ge.” Shor t l y b e fo re h i s death , to ge t he r wi t h hi s m e di a sc h o l a r so n

code—alm ost a cross be t we e n hi ero g l y p h i c s an d

poe t r y— t hat

he

ca l l e d

“ t he

te t ra d s.”

Th is was t he ul t i m ate t he ore t i ca l f ra mewo r k for an alyz i ng a ny new m e di um , a ko a n - l i ke poetics that transcended traditional means of discou r se. N ow Er i c M cL uha n ha s re cove re d all th e “ l ost ” te t ra ds t hat he a nd h i s fat h e r developed, a nd a ccom pa ni e s t he m h e re w i t h accessibl e ex pl a nat i ons of how t hey f u n c t i o n .

OR Books www.orbooks.com

C OV E R D E S I G N B Y B AT H C AT LT D .

ISBN 978-1-68219-096-8 90000

9 781682 190968

MARSHALL & ERIC McLUHAN

Er ic, McLuha n wor ke d on a new l i te ra r y/v i su a l

THE LOST TETRADS OF MA RS HALL McLU HAN

Mar sh all M cL uha n wa s t he vi s i onar y t h e o r i st

TH E LOST TETRADS

“ T H E T R U E M A S T E RW O R K

MARSHALL & E RIC McLUHAN

TH E LOST TETRADS O F MARSHALL McLUHAN

TH E LOST TETRADS OF

OR Books New York • London

MARSHALL McLUHAN

MARSHALL & ERIC McLUHAN

© 2017 Eric McLuhan, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan Published by OR Books, New York and London Visit our website at www.orbooks.com All rights information: [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes. First printing 2017 Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-68219-096-8 paperback ISBN 978-1-68219-097-5 e-book Text design and typesetting by Under|Over. Printed by BookMobile in the United States and CPI Books Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s

I n t ro d u c t i o n

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7



I . Te t ra d d e v e l o p m e n t a n d e x a m p l e s o f submissions



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

T h e O r i g i n a l L i st

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

I I . E x t e n s i o n s o f t h e P r i v at e B o d y

. . . . . . . 41

I I I . E x t e n s i o n s o f t h e C o r p o rat e B o d y . . . . . 1 1 5 I V . M i s c e l l a n e o u s L o st Te t ra d s V . M o re R e c e n t Te t ra d s Appendices

. . . . . . . . . . 1 5 9

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 5

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

I n d e x o f Te t ra d s

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Ac k n ow l e d g e m e nt s

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 7 0

A b o u t t h e A u t h o rs

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 74

B i b l i o g ra p h y

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

I n t ro d u c t i o n

A “tetrad” is a group of the four laws that govern all human innovations. The four laws concern what any particular technology or device will obsolesce, retrieve, enhance or amplify, and reverse into—in no particular order. Any invention will have a variety of effects, perhaps dozens, as it develops and flourishes in human society and culture, some more than others; some, fewer. The four that compose the tetrad apply in every single instance, without exception, so we called them laws. Scientific laws, such as the laws of thermodynamics, are always phrased as statements: “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.” The laws of media are phrased as questions instead of as statements, to preserve their heuristic character as instruments for probing situations (media). For example, “What does the new form enhance or amplify?” “What older form does it retrieve, reconstituted?” And so on. In the same vein, Picasso remarked, “Computers are useless: all they can give you is answers.” When you begin using tetrads to study media and artifacts, you find that each of the questions can produce more than a single answer. There is no one “right answer” or set of answers to any tetrad. All answers that are accurate are correct answers. When you have a clear answer to any one of the questions, then ask “what else?” The results will often organize themselves into layers or rings: in

7

T H E LO ST T E T RA D S

effect you will find more than one complete tetrad on a given subject which you can tease apart or leave as a compound. E.g., see the tetrads on the Credit Card, or on Life, or the Lode-stone. This book began as a project to update Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, which had appeared in 1964, at the request of its publisher. They had planned a tenth-anniversary “revised and expanded” edition in 1974. In the process of revising we discovered a completely new manner of studying media, one that covered not just media but all human inventions and technologies. To our surprise, we found that it applied to hardware products such as radios and motorcars as well as other (software) products of the imagination such as languages and words and theories and laws of science. The new laws of media constitute a powerful and revolutionary approach to the study and understanding of all human innovation, including media. They include the means to predict effects. In any event, the publisher did not like the revisions, which came in tetrad form: they considered our submission not so much a revision or an expansion as a total departure, and in that they were correct. They expected to see prose extensions of the existing chapters and additional chapters in essay form: they declined the new work. Thereupon, “Understanding Media Revised” became detached from Understanding Media and took on a life of its own. (The University of Toronto Press published it in 1988 as Laws of Media: The New Science.) We had in hand chapter files for each topic in Understanding Media: we added dozens of new ones to what was clearly becoming a new book as we tried the tetrad on heaps of topics, trivial and quadrivial. This was the exploration phase.

8

McLUHAN

Over the next months and years, the tetrads went through several metamorphoses as we wrestled with the problem of finding a way to present them. The first iteration was really a form of abbreviated note. We learned early that there was a significant difference between a tetrad and an essay, between the discursive form of Understanding Media and the condensed form that the tetrads demanded. It took a while to realize that a tetrad is not a prose essay but is a four-line poem. You might imagine each tetrad as a kind of stanza. As I point out in Chapter One, there is in fact a kind of rhyme scheme among the laws, taken in pairs. Laws of Media: The New Science is the finished product in academic-book form. On display here in The Lost Tetrads is the rough process of invention and development of the tetrads, from prose to poetic form. The nature of this book made it possible to avoid using academic form and footnotes. At the heart of this book are the sixty-five tetrads from the original manuscript that did not make the “final cut” into Laws of Media. Perhaps “loosed” would be more appropriate than “lost”: they were cut loose and several dozen other tetrads were inserted (there were hundreds to choose from) in their place. It is not at all necessary that the reader be familiar with Laws of Media in order to enjoy this collection, but anyone who is familiar with that work will find much here of interest and relevance. About the uneven nature of the text: to convey the flavor of the original, I had planned to provide facsimiles of the original typescript; it proved impossible because when the 8½ x 11-inch

9

T H E LO ST T E T RA D S

pages were reduced to book-size the type was generally unreadable, so we have imitated the messy originals as closely as possible on the computer.* The “lost” tetrads here are frequently inconsistent in format and in layout, though they do hew to general guidelines. I have been careful to include the inconsistencies. (I have taken one liberty with the presentation and put the title of each tetrad in larger type than the old typewriter—an IBM Model B—allowed.) The original typescript contained errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation, which I have retained for fidelity’s sake: all typos, etc., that appear here occur in the originals. A few of the originals contain handwritten notes, which I have reproduced in type. Many of the tetrads and their associated glosses lack information such as bibliographic data. These gaps, too, are reproduced. I have filled them in in the Bibliography at the end. Eric McLuhan December, 2016

*

10

The reader who delights in compositional messes will find many thousands of pages of the Laws project in the notes and fragments and drafts, handwritten and typed and typeset, which I donated to the Fisher Rare Books and Collections section of the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library. The “mother lode.” One tetrad is missing from the “lost” group in this book: the one on the Hobby Horse. It is hiding somewhere in that vast collection at the Fisher, but I and the curators have been unable to find it. I know it’s there… misfiled…

C h a pt e r O n e

The Laws appeared in print for the first time in a 1974 issue of the German journal, Unterrichtswissenschaft. The article, titled “Gesetze der Medien – strukturelle / Annäherung –”, ran for six pages (pp. 79 – 84), and was signed by Eric und Marshall McLuhan. It included tetrads, in list form, on such topics as Spoken Word, Phonetic Alphabet, Press, Typewriter, Xerox, Telephone, Radio, Electric Media, Money, and Satellite. The media laws appeared in print in English for the first time in June, 1977, in et cetera, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 173 – 179. The article was signed by Marshall McLuhan, and prefaced by a note by Paul Levinson. The method we used to present our groups of four Laws went through several stages of development on their way to the final form achieved in Laws of Media: The New Science. At first, we simply listed the four elements of the tetrad, as we had done in the German journal, and used the initial words, “Enhances” or “Amplifies,” “Obsolesces,” “Retrieves,” and “Reverses into” or just “Reversal.” These were preceded by the letters (A), (B), (C), and (D), respectively. Here are a few examples: 

11

T H E LO ST T E T RA D S

Cable TV

Corporate Body

(A) Enhances quality and diversity of signal pick-up (B) Obsolesces diffusion broadcasting, the home antenna (C) Retrieves the early transmission-broadcast pattern (D) Reversal is the flip to home-broadcasting

R e a r V i e w M i r ro r The Foreseeable Past

(A) Enhances the past (B) Obsolesces the present (C) Retrieves the future as percept (D) Reversal: merges the past and the future into simultaneous awareness

Note: In early drafts, we included two items of information in the top right corner of each tetrad. One item indicated whether the subject of the tetrad extended the private body or the group/social body. The second item stated which part of the body was extended. Often, in the pages that follow, you will see the annotations.

12

McLUHAN

Monarchy (A) Enhances the iconic-charismatic the hereditary integral (how divine) (B) Obsolesces the tribal democracy pushes aside kinship systems where all are kings (C) Retrieves the hot-situation emergency strategy (D) Reverses into the fragmented-representational

Re p u b l i c a n i s m (A) Intensifies the President, as private/individual representational (B) Obsolesces the hereditary and charismatic (C) Retrieves, re-cast, the tribal democracy (D) Reverses into: monarchy, via police state as system breaks down

E l e ct ri c P o l it i c s (A) Amplifies bureaucracy (B) Obsolesces politics (C) Retrieves C-M diplomacy (secret) (D) Reverses into: ubiquitous, Emperor’s image 

13

T H E LO ST T E T RA D S

In this format, they appeared in Unterrichtswissenschaft, and in et cetera, either as sentences in a paragraph or in a vertical list (as above). This arrangement proved troublesome. Invariably, readers assumed that the A-B-C-D indicated a sequence, and it became impossible, once the assumption had taken root, to dislodge it from their imaginations. We tried in various ways to emphasize the essential fact that there is no sequence among the Laws: they are all present simultaneously from the moment that any one of them appears. The solution would seem simple: omit the initial letters. We did so, but to no avail. Besides, the bare iteration of the four Laws felt cryptic and inadequate. Too, we had at hand a great deal of explanatory material; we felt we should add at least some of it to flesh out the simple statements. But how? This was not to be a prose essay. The answer lay in treating the extra matter as glosses. Back we went to ABCD: restore those capitals to the Laws and use lower-case abcd, much like footnote indices, to tell which gloss belonged with which Law. So we settled on a presentation of each subject that began with the list of Laws followed by the glosses in (alphabetic) order. For example:

14

McLUHAN

C ity Left page (A) Intensifies the centralizing of all human activities (B) Obsolesces the countryside, the rural (C) Retrieves homeostasis, bustle (D) reverses into suburb; breakdown of centralism Right page (a) ...forming a service environment arts, sciences, politics, economics, markets, money, mail... (b) (c) ...“paralysis” of the tribal village via. equilibrium dream of the pastoral: paralysis--enchantment of the heart Levi-Strauss noted of the Burmese that their houses reacted immediately and with great flexibility to their presence, their every movement. The house was, in fact, subject to the householder, whereas with us the opposite is the case. The village served the villagers as a coat of light elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a mammoth scale... --Tristes Tropiques, page 198

15

T H E LO ST T E T RA D S

Wa r Left page (A) Intensifies passions, and goals (B) Obsolesces leisure and luxuries (C) Retrieves camaraderie, team spirit (D) reverses into research, social science, and double-agentry Right page (a) hate rage togetherness purpose via. Flag-waving Speeds up the hardware economy and intensifies specialism the outer goals of conquest and territory (b) tourism and mere consumerism obsolesces boredom (boredom = rage spread thin) (c) tribal wholeness blood brothers retrieves lost identities, forges new ones retrieves corporate enterprise and social organization and invention and development on a massive scale (d) reverses to inner goal and software, knowledge espionage mainly sociological study and data-gathering Sam Lilley (Men, Machines and History, pp. 128, 196) speaks of “...the forcing-house of war, with technicians, factories and government funds,” and notes, for example, of the development of jet propulsion, “frustration in peace, followed by immense effort and quick success...” Another case in point is radar and its development

16

McLUHAN

Unfortunately, with this move we were back to contending with sequence. Furthermore, we ourselves had fallen into the habit of using a sequence. With or without the index letters ABCD, one item has to appear at the top of the page and another to follow it, etc., and thereby sequence is implied. We opted to display the glosses on each of the laws by scotch-taping two pages together to make a landscape-format, 17 x 11 inches. The list of Laws would appear on the left half; the glosses, on the right half, without using (a), (b), (c), and (d) beside them to indicate which of the laws they glossed. The publisher would lay out each tetrad that way in a two-page spread. We used that format in the manuscript when we submitted it to various publishers in the 1970s. All of the original tetrads that were excised from the Laws of Media manuscript and that appear in this book were given in this latter format. The tetrads below give the two-page layout form. Clearly, the layout idea represented an improvement. First, you have the one-page form; then the two-page spread.

17

C ity Left page (A) intensifies the centralizing of all human activities (B) Obsolesces the countryside, the rural (C) Retrieves homeostasis, bustle (D) reverses into suburb; breakdown of centralism Right page (a) ...forming a service environment arts, sciences, politics, economics, markets, money, mail... (b) (c) ...“paralysis” of the tribal village via. equilibrium dream of the pastoral: paralysis--enchantment of the heart Levi-Strauss noted of the Burmese that their houses reacted immediately and with great flexibility to their presence, their every movement. The house was, in fact, subject to the householder, whereas with us the opposite is the case. The village served the villagers as a coat of light elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a mammoth scale... --Tristes Tropiques, page 198,

19

C ity Intensifies the centralizing of all human activities Obsolesces the countryside, the rural Retrieves homeostasis, bustle

Reverses into suburb; breakdown of centralism  

20

...forming a service environment arts, sciences, politics, economics, markets, money, mail...

...“paralysis” of the tribal village via. equilibrium dream of the pastoral: paralysis--enchantment of the heart Levi-Strauss noted of the Burmese that their houses reacted immediately and with great flexibility to their presence, their every movement. The house was, in fact, subject to the householder, whereas with us the opposite is the case. The village served the villagers as a coat of light elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a mammoth scale... --Tristes Tropiques, page 198

21

Wa r Left page (A) Intensifies passions, and goals (B) Obsolesces leisure and luxuries (C) Retrieves camaraderie, team spirit (D) reverses into research, social science, and double-agentry Right page (a) hate rage togetherness purpose via. Flag-waving Speeds up the hardware economy and intensifies specialism the outer goals of conquest and territory (b) tourism and mere consumerism obsolesces boredom (boredom = rage spread thin) (c) tribal wholeness blood brothers retrieves lost identities, forges new ones retrieves corporate enterprise and social organization and invention and development on a massive scale (d) reverses to inner goal and software, knowledge espionage mainly sociological study and data-gathering Sam Lilley (Men, Machines and History, pp. 128, 196) speaks of “...the forcing-house of war, with technicians, factories and government funds,” and notes, for example, of the development of jet propulsion, “frustration in peace, followed by immense effort and quick success...” Another case in point is radar and its development

23

Wa r Intensifies passions, and goals

Obsolesces leisure and luxuries Retrieves camaraderie, team spirit

Reverses into research, social science, and double-agentry

Sam Lilley (Men, Machines and History, pp. 128, 196) speaks of “...the forcing-house of war, with technicians, factories and government funds,” and notes, for example, of the development of jet propulsion, “frustration in peace, followed by immense effort and quick success...”

24

hate rage togetherness purpose via. Flag-waving Speeds up the hardware economy and intensifies specialism the outer goals of conquest and territory tourism and mere consumerism obsolesces boredom (boredom = rage spread thin) tribal wholeness blood brothers retrieves lost identities, forges new ones retrieves corporate enterprise and social organization and invention and development on a massive scale reverses to inner goal and software, knowledge espionage mainly sociological study and data-gathering

Another case in point is radar and its development

25

T H E LO ST T E T RA D S

About this time, we had begun to realize that the four Laws had an inner harmony, and we looked for a way to display this resonance, one that would be easily apprehended by the reader. The Laws related to each other as analogical elements, in the traditional manner of proper proportionality: A is to B as C is to D. A ratio among ratios. Mathematicians and logicians write it this way: A : B :: C : D Our habitual key letters would lead everyone astray. If we followed them, they would produce (A) Enhance is to (B) Obsolesce as (C) Retrieve is to (D) Reverse, which is incorrect: the actual analogical ratios are thus: Enhance is to Reverse as Retrieve is to Obsolesce. Or, better, Enhance is to Reverse as Retrieve is to Obsolesce* At this point, it became absolutely essential to discard those key letters.

*

26

This is no recondite quibble. Tetrads, like any other system of proper proportionality, are resonant structures; it makes a great deal of difference if one gets the notes in a chord or the rhymes in a poem or the atoms in a molecule in the wrong positions.

McLUHAN

The eventual solution was achieved also using layout. Arrange the four Laws on the page so that their positions with respect to each other express graphically the analogical ratios, thus: Enhance Reverse Retrieve Obsolesce And so they appear in Laws of Media: The New Science. The “poem” of laws can be read horizontally, left to right (or right to left); or vertically, top to bottom (or bottom to top). All four ways to read preserve the analogical structure of the Laws. See Appendix One, infra. With this layout, the glosses encircle the laws on the page. Eventually, we adopted the word, Flip, instead of Reverse, to avoid confusion after we began using single letters (E-O-R-F rather than E-O-R-R) to identify the Laws. The following example, Instant Replay, shows all three stages in the process of development. The list form is first, followed by the two-page spread, and then the appositional presentation.

27

I n st a n t R e p l ay Left page (A) Enhances awareness of cognitive process (B) Obsolesces the representational and chronological (C) Retrieves “meaning” (D) Reverses from individual experience to corporate pattern recognition; tradition Right page (a) In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss deals with the moment of sunset as providing a replay of the experience of the day. Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherised upon a table . . . --T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (b) Pushed aside is the merely here-and-now experience (c) the epiphanic, the intensely aesthetic moment of insight and awareness (d) the mode of the archetypal What I call the ‘‘auditory imagination’’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. --T. S. Eliot, "Matthew Arnold" Current football achieves four-level exegesis via several replays of each play, just as statistics cover each play with past performance, private and corporate. What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. --Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (New York: Popular Library, 1960), p. 77

29

I n st a n t R e p l ay

Enhances awareness of cognitive process Obsolesces the representational and chronological Retrieves “meaning”

 

30

Reverses from individual experience to corporate pattern recognition; tradition

In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss deals with the moment of sunset as providing a replay of the experience of the day.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherised upon a table . . . --T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Pushed aside is the merely here-and-now experience the epiphanic, the intensely aesthetic moment of insight and awareness the mode of the archetypal What I call the ‘‘auditory imagination’’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. --T. S. Eliot, "Matthew Arnold" Current football achieves four-level exegesis via several replays of each play, just as statistics cover each play with past performance, private and corporate. What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. --Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (New York: Popular Library, 1960), p. 77

31

I n st a n t R e p l ay In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss deals with the moment of sunset as providing a replay of the experience of the day. Individual experience awareness of cognitive process

E R

meaning the epiphanic, the intensely aesthetic moment of insight and awareness

32

The mode of the archetypal. “What I call the ‘‘auditory imagination’’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end.” tradition,

--T.S. Eliot, "Matthew Arnold"

corporate pattern recognition

F O the representational and chronological

the merely here-and-now experience

33

The following list enumerates the tetrads included in the manuscript of Laws of Media that we presented to publishers as late as 1979. About half of them made the final cut for University of Toronto Press in 1987, and some twenty-five others were added to that final manuscript, as you can see if you compare the this list to the eventual book. Table of Contents The Laws of the Media* Private body Eye: 1. Spectacles 2. Mirror 3. Written word 4. Window 5. Camera 6. Clock Ear: 7. Spoken word 8. Slang 9.Talking drum Nose: 10. Perfume Teeth: 11. Zipper 12. Screw

*

In draft manuscript, the book was called The Laws of the Media, as here. The University of Toronto Press published the book under the title Laws of Media: The New Science.

Sinew: 13. Rope Arm: 14. Elevator Hand: 15. Pen 15a. Writing on stone 16. Number 17. (Number) zero Skin: 18. Clothing 19. Paper (writing) Flesh: 20. Bed Lungs: 21. Press Skeleton: 22. House; Housing Stomach: 23. Refrigeration Genitals: 24. Hat 25. Purse

36

Legs: 26. Stirrup 27. Stairs Feet: 28. Wheel 29. Hobby Horse 30. Bicycle Whole body: 31. Oar 32. Coracle/kayak/canoe 33. Airplane 34. Car Also 35. Wine 36. Booze 37. Drugs 38. Anesthesia 39. Cigarette 40. Pipe 41. Compass 42. Kinetic space 43. Tactile space 44. Acoustic space 45. Visual space 46. Private dream 47. Corporate dream 48. Audiotape

37

Corporate Body 49. Electric media 50. Electric light 51. Telegraph press 52. Microphone / PA system 53. Telephone 54. Radio 55. Television 56. Cable TV 57. Cassette TV 58. Instant Replay 59. Mass media 60. Computer 61. Credit card 62. Xerox 63. Inflation 64. Brothel 65. Hi-rise 66. Crowd 67. Court 68. City 69. Walled city 70. War 71. Committee 72. The FAKE 73. Pollsters 74. Cliché Whole planet: 75. Satellite

38

Miscellaneous 76. Law of the Jungle 77. Law of Implementation 78. Law of Obsolescence 79. Law of Etherealization 80. Law of Equilibrium 81. Law of Effect (Maslow’s Rule) 82. Subliminal 83. Rear-view Mirror 84. User as Content: The Medium is the Message 85. Organized Ignorance 86, 87, 88. Monarchy/Republicanism/Electric politics 89. Unisex 90. Cubism 91. Avogadro’s Law 92. The New Genetics 93. First Law of Thermodynamics 94. Second Law of Thermodynamics 95. The Copernican Revolution 96. Aristotle: The Law of Motion 97. Impetus 98. Newton’s First Law of Motion 99. Newton’s Second Law of Motion 100. Newton’s Third Law of Motion 101. Newtonian Motion and 102. Einsteinian Space-Time Relativity 103. The Tetrad 104. Verbum (Utterance) 105. Metaphor 106. Aristotelian Causality 39

C h a pt e r T wo E x t e n s i o n s o f t h e P r i v at e B o d y

Eye: 1. Spectacles 2. Mirror 3. Written word 4. Window 5. Camera 6. Clock Ear: 9. Talking drum Nose: 10. Perfume Teeth: 11. Zipper 12. Screw Sinew: 13. Rope Arm: 14. Elevator

41

Hand: 15. Pen 15a. Writing on stone 16. Number 17. (Number) zero Skin: 18. Clothing Flesh: 20. Bed Lungs: 21. Press Skeleton: 22. House; Housing Genitals: 24. Hat 25. Purse Legs: 27. Stairs Feet: 28. Wheel 29. Hobby Horse

42

30. Bicycle Whole body: 31. Oar 32. Coracle/kayak/canoe 34. Car Also 38. Anesthesia 41. Compass 46. Private Dream 47. Corporate Dream 48. Audiotape

43

private body / eye / spectacles

S p e ct a c l e s (A) Amplifies a user’s reading lifetime, amplifies size of print (enabling printers to use smaller type and cram pages with more words) Amplifies the audience for print (B) Obsolesces the pinhole magnifier, and the need for large type (C) Retrieves, re-cast, “average” vision, twenty-twenty (D) Reverses into the microscope and telescope  

44

spectacles 2

They put the user in a frame “The use of glasses in the following centuries magnified the authority of the eye.” (Mumford, Technics and Civilization, p. 127) One technique for magnifying vision had been to look at the page through a pinhole in a piece of paper “Singer has suggested that the revival of learning might in part be attributed to the number of additional years of eyesight for reading that the spectacles gave to human life. Spectacles were in wide use by the fifteenth century when, with the invention of printing, a great need for them declared itself…” (Mumford, Technics and Civilization, p. 126)

45

private body/eye/mirror

M i r ro r (A) Enhances ego and detachment by repetition and echo-matching of a figure-minus-its-ground

(B) Obsolesces the corporate mask and corporate appearance (C) Retrieves the mode of Narcissus

(D) Reverses into “making” outlook becomes insight death of echo-as-matching “…this preoccupation with one’s image comes at the threshold of the mature personality when young Narcissus gazes long and deep into the face of the pool--and the sense of the separate personality, a perception of the objective attributes of one’s identity, grows out of this communion. The use of the mirror signaled the beginning of introspective biography in the modern style: that is, not as a means of edification but as a picture of the self, its depths, its mysteries, its inner dimensions. The self in the mirror corresponds to the physical world that was brought to light by natural science in the same epoch: it was the self in abstracto, only part of the real self, the part that one can divorce from the background of nature and the influential presence of other men.” (Mumford, Technics and Civilization, p. 129) 46

Mirror 2

Print has the same effect for the user, but as another mode; “multiply variety in a wilderness of mirrors” (T.S. Eliot Ophelia: … “The glass of fashion and the mould of form The observed of all observers … quite, quite down” that is, numbness of all but one form of sensibility: Zeus to Narcissus – “Watch yourself!” Echo: “Narcissus, is there someone else?” (NewYorker cartoon) Montaigne’s introspection in the mirror of print prompted his remark, “I owe a complete portrait of myself to the public…” Moron, when asked for identification, looks in a handmirror, “That’s me all right.”

 

47

private body/eye/written

Wr i t t e n w o rd (A) Amplifies private authorship, the ego (B) Obsolesces vulgar slang, dialects, group identity; separates composition and performance (C) Retrieves élitism

(D) Reversal comes with the corporate reading public and “historical sense” Reverses into assembly line

 

48

private body/eye/writing 2

the visual faculty is fissioned off from the other senses

the integral “common sense” of interplay and ambiguity is displaced An older language is retrieved for use and tidied up: Rome spoke Greek; the Twelfth century spoke Latin vulgarity becomes snob-ism, for the in-group “…in those neutral modes of writing called here ‘the zero degree of writing,’ we can easily discern a negative momentum, and, an inability to maintain it … …Colourless writing like Camus’s … or conversational writing like Queneau’s, represents the last episode of a Passion of writing, which recounts stage by stage the disintegration of bourgeois consciousness.” (Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero; London: Jonathan Cape, 1967; p. 11)

Montaigne felt the situation of print as like putting messages in bottles: “Amusing notion: many things that I would not want to tell anyone, I tell the public; and for my most secret knowledge and thoughts I send my most faithful friends to a bookseller’s shop…” (D. M. Frame, Montaigne, A Biography, p. 82) Letters are an extension of the teeth, the only lineal and repetitive part of the body-“King Cadmus sowed the dragon’s teeth and they sprang up armed men.” 49  

Private Body

Wr i t t e n w o rd

The visual faculty is fissioned off from the other senses

Letters are an extension of the teeth, the only lineal and repetitive part of the body--



"King Cadmus sowed the Dragon's teeth and they sprang up armed men."

ENHANCES: private authorship, the ego RETRIEVES: elitism

An older language is retrieved for use and tidied up: Rome spoke Greek; the twelfth century spoke Latin; vulgarity becomes snob-ism, for the in-group Montaigne felt the situation of print as like putting messages in a bottles: "Amusing notion: many things that I would not want to tell anyone, I tell the public; and for my most secret knowledge and thoughts I send m most faithful friends to a bookseller's shop..."* *

Frame, D. M. Montaigne, A Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965, p. 82.

"...in those neutral modes of writing, called here 'the zero degree of writing,' we can easily discern a negative momentum, and, an inability to maintain it.... Colourless writing like Camus's...or conversational writing like Queneau's, represents the last episode of a Passion of writing, which recounts stage by stage the disintegration of bougeois consciousness.* REVERSES: with the corporate reading public and "historical sense" OBSOLESCES: vulgar slang, dialects; separates composition and performance the integral 'common sense' of interplay and ambiguity is displaced.

*

Barthes, Roland. Writing Degree Zero. London:

Jonathan Cape, 1967; p.11. 51

private body/eye/window

W i n d ow (clear glass)

(A) Amplifies the division between inner and outer space (B) Obsolesces horn, oil paper, stained glass, shutters (C) Retrieves the “outer world” previously occluded by stained glass and shutters (D) Reverses user into spectator attitude  

52

private body/eye/window/2

heightens the sense of private and public space obsolesces traditional living space with low ceilings Enter the picturesque reverses from letting-light-in to outlook, to looking out; puts the world in a frame.  

53

Private / eye / camera

C a m e ra (A) Snapshot enhances aggression (private) (B) Obsolesces privacy (C) Retrieves past as present; retrieves big-game hunter, capturing human zoo (D) Reverses into public domain

 

"Animal locomotion - 16 frames of racehorse 'Annie G.' galloping" by Eadweard Muybridge, courtesy Library of Congress

54

Camera 2

the camera, like the gun, serves as “equalizer” the camera “eye” renders the photographer a Cyclops … Bring ’em back alive Shades of the ancient human condition Mumford cites the bet between Muybridge and Stanford in which the former insisted that a running horse at times had all its feet off the ground and that could be captured: “Edward Muybridge, to decide a bet with Leland Stanford, a horselover, undertook to photograph the successive motions of a horse …” (Technics and Civilization, p. 251)*

The nude is not naked: she wears her public. The stripper is naked only from the moment she steps backstage.

The camera created, in the late nineteenth century, the cult of the PBs (Public Beauties)--a sort of Gibson-Girl group made possible by the wide circulation of photographs. In our age, they have reversed into the BPs--the Beautiful People.

*

“In 1887 it occurred to Edison, who was aware of these experiments, to do for the eye what he had already done for the ear, and the invention of the motion picture followed…” (Mumford, Technics and Civilization, p. 251) Ed. note: See also Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. New York: Viking Penguin, 2003.

Private Body: Eye

C a m e ra the camera, like the gun, serves as "equalizer"

the camera "eye" turns the photographer into a Cyclops "In 1887 it occured to Edison, who was aware of these experiments, to do for the eye what he had already done for the ear, and the invention of the motion picture followed..."* aggression (private) past as present big-game hunter, capturing human zoo shades of the ancient human condition

Mumford cites the bet between Muybridge and Stanford in which the former insisted that a running horse at times had all its feet off the ground and that could be captured: "Edward Muybridge, to decide a bet with Leland Stanford, a horse-lover, undertook to photograph the successive motions of a horse..."** * Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, p. 251 ** Ibid. 56

Camera 2

The camera created, in the late nineteenth century the cult of the PB's (Public Beauties)--a sort of Gibson-Girl group made possible by the wide circulation of photographs. In our age they have reversed into the BP's--the Beautiful People. public domain privacy, portrait-painting

...Bring 'em back alive The nude is not naked:

she wears her public The Stripper is naked only from the moment she steps backstage.

57

private body/eye/clock

Clock (A) Amplifies work

(B) Obsolesces leisure

(C) Retrieves history as art form, via fixed chronology (D) Reverses into the Eternal Present the 17th Century “Sacrament of the Present Moment.”  

58

private body/eye/clock 2 “The clock … is a piece of power-machinery whose “product” is seconds and minutes: by its essential nature it dissociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences …” (Mumford, Tech. and Civ. p. 15). “The Waste Land” – a poem about the clock-run city. “To live without clocks would be to live forever.” --R.L. Stevenson exit the bells and sundials in the orient, time is “told” by smell rather than by eye “History as her is harped”--(James Joyce): the oral history gets ironed out and tidied up Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu

“Opposed to the erratic fluctuations and pulsation of the worldly life was the iron discipline of the rule. Benedict added a seventh period to the devotions of the day, and in the seventh century, by a Bull of Pope Sabinianus, it was decreed that the bells of the monastery be rung seven times in the twenty-four hours. These punctuation marks in the day were known as the canonical hours, and some means of keeping count of them and ensuring their regular repetition became necessary.” (Mumford, Technics and Civilization, p. 13)

59

Private body/ear/drum

Ta l k i n g D r u m (a) Enhances resonant interval, rhythm (b) Obsolesces the merely vocal

(c) Retrieves the modes of gesture and dance

(d) Reverses into song; sob or scream

60

Talking drum 2

(a) Translates speech into language, La Parole into La Langue (b) tribal balbutience (stutter) Balbus was building a wall words fail me -(c) Retrieval of tribal rhythms via hi-fi craze, as what was figure lowers in definition and becomes a ground of interplay. (d) meaning … the “dance of the intellect among the words” drink to me only with thine eyes… Ali Akhbar Khan, Ravi Shankar’s tabla-ist, is famous for his ability to mime the voices and speech patterns of members of the audience. cf. Primal Scream by Robert Ardrey (author of Territorial Imperative)

61

private body/nose/perfume

Perfume (A) Enhances the exotic, elusive, ambiguous (B) Obsolesces everyday B.O. (C) Retrieves the group (D) Reverses into specialist  

62

perfume2

Osmic space: corporate and ambiguous and elusive spice vs. flower i.e., the banal; the moral and private (My Sin) E.g., “Le” de Givenchy: originally made for Audrey Hepburn, only to become a collective craze The personal and identifiable--more YOU

63

Private body/teeth/zipper

Zipper (A) Amplifies and quickens grip, clasp (B) Obsolesces button and snaps and pins (C) Retrieves long flowing robes (Greek) easy to manage (D) Reverses into velcro, drape  

64

private body/teeth/arm/

S c re w

e.g., clamp, press (A) Amplifies pressure (intensive) (B) Obsolesces repose

stress

grace

(C) Retrieves paralysis--against loosening to entertain--to hold between (D) Reverses into repression -- distress  

66

screw/2

(A) posture

the kinetic interval

(B) (C) In Dubliners, Joyce considered the city as “the centre of paralysis” (D) putting the screws to language…yields slang  

67

Private body/sinew/rope

Ro p e (A) Amplifies distance (B) Obsolesces close-up action and much body involvement (C) Retrieves the “haul”; capture or rescue (ie., the hunter) (D) Reverses into the pulley and/or lever

68

Rope2

“Drop me a line.” “Hang on a minute, will you?” “I’m all tied up.” “The long arm of the law” roping ’em in “Throw ’im both ends of the rope. (rescue) “haul ’em in . . . hand over hand.” tied in knots “string ’im up!” “string ’em along” “give ’im enough rope …” overhaul: to overtake, or, to refashion, reconstitute Lunge--a long rope used in training horses, fastened at one end to the horse’s head and held by the trainer at the other, who causes the horse to canter around in a circle . . . (Oxford English Dictionary) lunging . . . longing (e.g., for someone, etc) “Nor cast one longing ling’ring look behind” (Gray, Elegy)

69

Private body / arm / elevator

E l e v at o r (A) Enhances speed of access and distance or depth, creating underground cities (B) obsolesces stairs, ladders and so on

(C) Retrieves hidden treasures, minerals; (D) Reverses into the hi-rise and skyscraper: new fractions and egalitarianism of the elevator

 

70

Elevator 2

Cave-man appears

with levity …

Obsolesces gravity* (* Gravity: a mysterious carriage of the body to conceal the defects of the mind.” Laurence Sterne) . . . and hauls back the hierarchy: what level you on? From cave dweller to cliff dweller caveman to cliff-hanger

“The mine, to begin with, is the first completely inorganic environment to be created and lived in by man…” (Mumford, Technics and Civilization, p. 69)

 

71

private body/hand/pen

Pen (A) Increases

action at a distance

(B) Obsolesces the spoken word (C) Retrieves recorded gesture (D) Reverses into sword

 

72

Pen 2

Actions speak louder than words

73

private body/eye

Wr i t i n g o n S t o n e (A) Enhances the record

as time-binder

(B) Obsolesces memory obsolesces the shaman and the oral poet (C) Retrieves the priest as bureaucrat

(D) Reverses into monumentality, timelessness

74

writing on stone/2

(a) “ In the North the use of stone favoured centralized power and it was used to a larger (b) extent in sculpture, as a medium of writing, particularly of laws, and in architecture. --H. A. Innis, Empire and Communications (Oxford, the Clarendon Press, 1950) p. 53 (c) (d) “Look on my works ye mighty and despair”*

*

Editor’s note: P. B. Shelley, "Ozymandias".

75

private body/hand/number

Number (A) Amplifies plurality, quantity (B) Obsolesces holism (C) Retrieves zero, blank (D) Reverses into mere graph, statistic, profile of the crowd  

76

private body/hand/number/2

e.g., possessions fractioning figures out of their ground Notches, knots, symbols, tallies Math, algebra: the hidden ground of number is letters pattern recognition kinetic line of the graph: the language of gesture

77

Private body/hand/number/zero

N u m b e r / Z e ro (a) enhances positional intervals 1, 2, 3….9, 0 -- mobile numbers -- LaPlace (b) Alphabetic and literary Roman (Greeks used first letters for numbers) (c) retrieves previous “illness” of thoughts i.e., chaos -- yawn -- gap between heaven and earth non-being = Zero (d) stasis (abstraction)

LaPlace in Bob’s article*

page 2 — quotes from Wheelwright

*

78

Ed. note: University of Toronto faculty physicist Robert K. Logan.

Missing Link* (a) idea of connection relatedness among [?] (as zero > algebraic equations (b) random disorder (c) chain of being (Porphyrian Tree) (d) natural selection from random field chance and necessity

 

*

Ed. note: handwritten note stapled to the tetrad on Number/Zero.

79

Private body/skin/clothing

C l ot h i n g (A) Increases private energy of the user (B) Obsolesces climate (C) Retrieves weaponry (D) Reverses into conventional attire

 

80

Clothing /2

I.e., clothing as thermal control tribal energy of mask or trophy private energy displaced into corporate uniform

“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled” T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

81

Private body / skin / clothing

C l ot h i n g Nothing wears clothes but man

Enclosed, personal space INCREASES* private energy of the user RETRIEVES Weaponry Tribal energy of mask or trophy

*

82

Ed. note: additional gloss to INCREASES: “…I was vividly aware, for instance, of houses which, though flimsy, had a majesty of sheer scale about them, Their materials, and the uses to which they were put, were such as we encounter in dwarfish state. For these houses were not so much built as knotted together, plaited, woven, embroidered, and given a patina by long use. Those who lived in them were not overwhelmed by great blocks of unyielding stone; these were houses that reacted immediately and with great flexibility to their presence, to their every movement. The house was, in fact, subject to the householder, whereas with us the opposite is the case. The village served the villagers as a coat of light, elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a mammoth scale, and those who built it had been clever enough to preserve something of the spontaneity of natural growth…” Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

Private body / clothing 2 private energy displaced Into corporate uniform I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.* REVERSES into conventional attire OBSOLESCES climate i.e., clothing as thermal control

*

Eliot, T.S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, lines 120-123.

83

private body/flesh/bed

Bed “The bliss of the marriage-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue...” (Mrs. Patrick Campbell) pneumatic bliss (private)

ENHANCES RETRIEVES social status

(recall Shakespeare’s “second-best bed”)

84

Bed2

You’ve made your bed... now lie in it...

into trap REVERSES OBSOLESCES   boughs, straw lying on the earth Sunlit pallets never thrive (Housman)

85

private body/lungs/press

P re s s (A) Enhances today, via date-line

(B) Obsolesces yesterday, the sequential

(C) Retrieves “coverage”

(D) Reverses into: “soft news”  

86

Press2

and mosaic of events; “he made the news” all news is Pseudo-event (Dan Boorstin) communal awareness vs. point-of-view only the paranoid can find connections between the items in a newspaper news as corporate clothing for naked egos, for entire community. (cf. Pirandello’s To Clothe the Naked) advertising: the garment of abundance

good news

“The Artillery of the Press” used to be leveled at individuals, now gets turned on the whole public by the Patty Hearsts: the audience is hi-jacked  

87

private body/skeleton/house, housing

Housing (A) Amplifies private, enclosed, visual space (B) Obsolesces cave, tent, wigwam, dome (C) Retrieves the aggressive pioneer wagon train (covered wagons) (D) Reverses into corporate mask: hi-rise or suburbia  

88

Housing 2

…I was vividly aware, for instance, of houses which, though flimsy, had a majesty of sheer scale about them. Their materials, and the uses to which they were put, were such as we encounter only in dwarfish state. For these houses were no so much built as knotted together, plaited, woven, embroidered, and given a patina by long use. Those who lived in them were not overwhelmed by great blocks of unyielding stone; these were houses that reacted immediately and with great flexibility to their presence, to their every movement. The house was, in fact, subject to the householder, whereas with us the opposite is the case. The village served the villagers as a coat of light, elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a massive scale, and those who built it had been clever enough to preserve something of the spontaneity of natural growth … (Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques)  

89

Private body/skeleton/house

House (E) Enhances clothing as enclosed, visual space

(F) Obsolesces climate (G) Retrieves bodily clothing as art form, fashion (H) Reverses into a machine for living in

 

90

Housing 2

“The roses ’round the door make me love Mother more”?

“There’s a wee house ’mang the heather …”

“It ain’t no sin to take off yo’ skin and dance around in your bones” Also a machine to live in?

I.E., the car, the mobile home?

91

Private body / stomach / refrigerator

R e f r i g e rat o r (A) Enhances availability of wider range of foods (B) Obsolesces dried food, taste of fresh food (C) Retrieves leisure of cook and of provider (D) Reverses into homogeneity -- of flavor and texture

  

92

principle of storage -- stomach, memory

Private body / Genitals (male) / hat

H at cocked hat stovepipe top hat self-importance bowler snap-brim E

F

R

O

shovel hat

the comic (lid)

corporate role hard hat deerstalker busby cook’s hat tri-corner 94

the private person  

Private body / genitals (female) purse

P u rs e Self-reliance



E

F

R

O

Miscellany (cornucopia)

Suitcase (travel bag) Shopping bag

Pockets

95

Private Body / legs

S t a i rs or, up the down staircase (inconvenience)

“I’ll build a stairway to the stars”

ranch house-one floor? or escalator?

height of dwelling



enclosed space

“upstairs, downstairs, in my Lady’s chamber...”

E

F

R

O

and tree house, cabin, hut

 

96

rope, ladder, ramp

Private body / feet / wheel

WHEEL (a) Extends posture of pedestrian lunge (b) Alternating leverage of legs and feet

 

Photograph courtesy The Estate of Marshall McLuhan

98

Wheel 2 of 4

(a) …perhaps our survival (certainly our comfort and happiness) depends upon our recognizing the nature of our new environment. It is sometimes blamed on the computer, which we have the habit of calling a “machine.” This, of course, is pure rear-view mirrorism, seeing the (b) old environment in the mirror of the new one while ignoring the new one. As Lowenstein indicates:

It may be said that, after all, man is not a robot, and therefore all this automatic gadgetry may be very little relevant to our understanding of postural and movement control. Nothing would be further from the truth …. the coordination of limb movement and body posture is almost entirely unconscious and automatic, and however complex the sensory structures involved, the information issuing from them hardly ever reaches the higher centers of the brain, but gives rise to what the biologist calls reflex actions.

Man is not only a robot in his private reflexes but in his civilized behavior and in all his responses to the extensions of his body, which we call technology. The extensions of man, with their ensuing environments, it’s now fairly clear, are the principal area of manifestations of the evolutionary process.

We are all robots when uncritically involved with our technologies.



The whool of the whaal in the wheel of the whorl of the Boubou from Bourneum has thus come to taon!)FW 415

When old the wormd was a gadden and Anthea first unfoiled her limbs wanderloot was the way the wood wagged where opter and apter were samuraised twimbs. FW 354*

*

Ed. note: Marginalia from War and Peace in the Global Village by M. McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, pp. 18–19. “FW” means taken from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. 99

Wheel 3 of 4

(C) dance, circular, repetitive

(D) racing

100

Wheel 4 of 4

(c) W. B. Yeats, in “Among School Children,” meditating on the cycles of generation and growth, turns to the chestnut tree as a massive cycler, and then to the rapid cycling of the dancer: O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? In “East Coker” (Four Quartets) Eliot has a section relating to the dance: On a summer midnight, you can hear the music Of the weak pipe and the little drum And we see them dancing around the bonfire The association of man and woman In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie -He is quoting his ancestor Sir Thomas Elyot’s book The Governor as if he were noting the wheel of his own ancestral generation, but he also stresses the ancient tribal ritual dancing: Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles (d)

101

Private body/feet/bicycle

B i c yc l e Enhances locomotion Obsolesces walking Retrieves equilibrium Flips into airplane Treadmill as extension of legs?

102

private body/whole body/oar

Oar (a) Amplifies power of whole body via leverage (b) Obsolesces paddles (c) Retrieves team (d) Reverses into paddle-wheel, propeller, screw  

103

private body/whole body/coracle, kayak, canoe

C o ra c l e

K ay a k

Canoe

(A) Increases private autonomy, bridges gaps (B) Obsolesces swimming (C) Retrieves: merman (D) reverses into: bridge

 

104

body private/coracle/kayak/canoe2

mobile floating private bridge module “paddle your own canoe” (autonomy) obsolesces the single log, the raft (in, not on, the water) retrieves trade, retrieves the nomad permanent bridge is corporate presents aspects of the clothing mode “…Like the Antipodes in shoes Have shod their heads in their canoes…”*  

*

Ed. note: Andrew Marvell, "Appleton House:" And now the salmon-fishers moist Their leathern boats begin to hoist; And, like Antipodes in shoes, 105 Have shod their heads in their canoes.

Private body/whole body/car

M ot o r c a r (A) Enhances privacy

(B) Obsolesces horse-and-buggy (C) Retrieves knight in shining armour (D) Reversal: traffic jam (corporate privacy)  

106

private body/whole/car2

(a) going outside to be alone the ego trip mobile home alone at a drive-in movie pedestrian: the invader of privacy (b) (c) retrieves also the countryside retrieves the river as the mode of traffic flow (d) reverses urb (city) into suburb (corporate privacy) traffic lights as locks? helicopter as canal control?

Photograph courtesy The Estate of Marshall McLuhan

107

Private Body

A n a e st h e s i a cumulative pain on the installment plan recovery via intensive care



pre-natal, pre-conscious involvement of touch, kinesthesia hospital as womb

108

“stress of anaesthesia” (Selye II, p. 31) post-surgical shock

tolerance of intense pain

E

F

R

O sensibility, violence of patient

local and general anaesthetics

Compass (outer bearings)

(inner bearings)

compass as primitive form of circuitry resonant, permitting circumnavigation of the globe

range and accuracy of navigation

astronomy as art form

inner trip

Inertial Guidance System



E

F

R

O

electric environment circuitry as exo-nervous system

stars

thereby retrieves the globe as resonant spherical plenum

109

Private Body

D re a m residual trivia of the day

primitive / infantile experience (from area of anxiety)

110

awake consciousness

E

F

R

O day-time figures image anxiety  

Corporate Body

D re a m cultural trivialities

national heroes



E

F

R

O

way of life

everyday heroes sports “stars” movie stars etc.

111

private body/audiotape

A U D I O TA P E (a) Enhances/captures immediate situation (b) Obsolesces stenographer and memorization (c) Retrieves living history

(d) Becomes (flips into) time bomb

112

private body/audiotape/2

(a) (b) (c) Nixon was adamant. The indiscretion of installing the tape system should not forever burden the office of the presidency, he told Buzhardt. No outsider could comprehend the breadth of the intimate material on those tapes. Those tapes were the essence of the presidency. They contained the private thoughts and comments not only of the President but of foreign leaders, Congressmen, his aides, even his family. Buzhardt must understand. If the President broke the confidence of those who unburdened themselves in his office, it would shatter the presidency—not only his own but also his successors’. (p. 58) (d) They couldn’t function as lawyers anymore, Garment and Buzhardt said. Their work consisted of pooling ignorance. They couldn’t get the evidence to defend their client, even if it existed. The President wouldn’t give them access to it. Instead, he gave them excuses. In defending himself, the President had planted time bombs, Garment said. Nixon had concealed, he had hedged, he had lied. Some of the bombs had already gone off, and the rest lay ticking. Individually the problems might be manageable, but taken together they were insurmountable. They all interlocked, and the single thread that linked the problems together was the President’s tapes. The lawyers represented a President who had bugged himself, who had blurted his secrets into hidden microphones. They had not yet heard the tapes, not seen any transcripts of them. The president would not permit it. They were told to mount a defense, but were not give the information to do so. (p. 23) The Final Days Woodward and Bernstein Simon & Schuster, 1976

C h a p t e r T h re e E x t e n s i o n s o f t h e C o r p o rat e B o d y

49. Electric media 56. Cable TV 57. Cassette TV 58. Instant Replay 59. Mass media 61. Credit card 63. Inflation 67. Court 68. City 69. Walled city 70. War 71. Committee 72. The FAKE  

115

Corporate Body: Nervous System

E l e ct ri c M e d i a

(in general) Toynbee (A Study in History) noted the tendency to do more and more with less and less: Etherealization. This is the epitome, the reversal whereby there is no hardware any more. No distance or detachment at the speed of light information range, scope (etc.), into status of service environment via simultaneity, “speed of light”

E R the subliminal- audile-tactile-dialogue The merger of conscious and subconscious

116

Electric Media

2

By virtue of the nature of the subliminal, when it is merged with the conscious, private identity is obsolesced as incompatible, irrelevant, unnecessary. Enter the artist as navigator, art serving us as fins do a fish hardware becomes software; the sender is sent as discarnate information, i.e., etherealization

F

O

the visual, connected, discrete, logical rational Obsolesces the visual dimension: obsolesces the physical—man becomes discarnate, disembodied spirit / intelligence

The Psyche travels at the speed of a camel; the body can go at any speed. E.g., “jet lag” phenomenon: while the rest of you “has arrived,” the body and its clocks and rhythms are still at your point of departure. 117

(Corporate Body)

Cable TV Left Page: (A) Enhances quality and diversity of signal pick-up (B) Obsolesces diffusion broadcasting, the home antenna (C) Retrieves the early transmission-broadcast pattern (D) Reversal is the flip to home-broadcasting Right page (a) is cable “on the air”? (b) that is, TV is no longer “wireless” (c) point-to-point directed signals . . . by wire (d) with audience access, audience becomes broadcaster: that signals the end of the audience Consumer becomes producer This has already taken place in another mode via the polls: audience has already been pushed out . . . into action  

119

C a b l e T V Enhances quality and diversity of signal pick-up

Obsolesces diffusion broadcasting, the home antenna

Retrieves the early transmission-broadcast pattern

Reversal is the flip to home-broadcasting

120

Corporate Body

is cable “on the air”?

that is, TV is no longer “wireless”

point-to-point directed signals . . . by wire

with audience access, audience becomes broadcaster: that signals the end of the audience Consumer becomes producer This has already taken place in another mode via the polls: audience has already been pushed out . . . into action  

121

Cable TV

Is cable “on the air”? Quality and diversity of signal pickup

E R the early transmissionbroadcast pattern point-to-point directed signals— by wire

122

With audience access, audience becomes broadcaster: that signals the end of the audience Consumer becomes producer This has already taken place in another mode via the polls: audience has already been pushed out . . . into action

home broadcasting

F O diffusion broadcasting; The home antenna that is, TV is no longer “wireless”

123

(Corporate Body)

C a s s et t e T V Left page (A) Amplifies scope of access to programs and materials via recordings (B) Obsolesces the broadcaster via recording of social processes (C) Retrieves outer world (D) World goes into (art) role Right page (a) autonomy of program maker (b) obsolesces centralized hardware of broadcasting (c) e.g., trial of Andrew Johnson? (d) spectator becomes actor/producer

124

(Corporate Body)

C a s s et t e T V autonomy of the program maker scope of access to programs and materials via recordings

retrieves outer world e.g.trial of Andrew Johnson?

spectator becomes actor/producer world goes into (art) role

E

F

R

O obsolesces the broadcaster via recording of social processes obsolesces the centralized hardware of the broadcaster

125

I n st a n t R e p l ay Left page (A) Enhances awareness of cognitive process (B) Obsolesces the representational and chronological (C) Retrieves “meaning” (D) Reverses from individual experience to corporate pattern recognition; tradition Right page (a) In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss deals with the moment of sunset as providing a replay of the experience of the day. Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherised upon a table . . . --T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (b) Pushed aside is the merely here-and-now experience (c) the epiphanic, the intensely aesthetic moment of insight and awareness (d) the mode of the archetypal What I call the ‘‘auditory imagination’’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. --T. S. Eliot, "Matthew Arnold" Current football achieves four-level exegesis via several replays of each play, just as statistics cover each play with past performance, private and corporate. What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. --Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (New York: Popular Library, 1960), p. 77

I n st a n t R e p l ay

Enhances awareness of cognitive process Obsolesces the representational and chronological Retrieves “meaning”

 

128

Reverses from individual experience to corporate pattern recognition; tradition

In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss deals with the moment of sunset as providing a replay of the experience of the day.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherised upon a table . . . --T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Pushed aside is the merely here-and-now experience the epiphanic, the intensely aesthetic moment of insight and awareness the mode of the archetypal What I call the ‘‘auditory imagination’’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. --T. S. Eliot, "Matthew Arnold" Current football achieves four-level exegesis via several replays of each play, just as statistics cover each play with past performance, private and corporate. What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. --Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (New York: Popular Library, 1960), p. 77

129

I n st a n t R e p l ay In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss deals with the moment of sunset as providing a replay of the experience of the day. Individual experience awareness of cognitive process

E R

meaning the epiphanic, the intensely aesthetic moment of insight and awareness

130

The mode of the archetypal. “What I call the ‘‘auditory imagination’’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end.” tradition,

T.S. Eliot, Matthew Arnold

corporate pattern recognition

F O the representational and chronological the merely here-and-now experience

131

Mass Media Amplifies planet to single theatre

Obsolescing private identity and bodily presence

Retrieves the occult

Reversal of hardware into software: everything is everywhere at once

132

world as not “new ball game” but new ball park the crowd dynamic applies immediately: desire to enlarge as individual component diminishes Obsolesces hardware, and the sequential, the chronological Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present . . . At the still point of the turning world . . . there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. * acoustic involvement and the information environment “The buried self is largely an archaic self” (Muriel C. Bradbrook, English Dramatic Form--Cambridge U.P., 1965, p. 125) retrieves the primitive’s sense, “the world is my warehouse…” “These fragments I have shored against my ruins” (TWL)** From Homer to the present constitutes a simultaneous order” (TIT) As the body is obsolesced, reversal is to discarnate group participation via. images: user becomes information; at the speed of light, the sender is sent. R. D. Laing observed (Politics of Experience) that this intense participation makes everybody in our world as whores and murderers *

**

T. S. E, "Burnt Norton," The Four Quartets

Ed. note: T. S. Eliot. TWL is “The Waste Land”; TIT is “Tradition and the Individual Talent.”

Corporate body / credit card

C re d i t c a rd (A) Enhances image of user (B) Obsolesces money (C) Retrieves corporate services (D) Reversal is to barter, inflation

Or … (A) Amplifies private imagery (B) Obsolesces money (C) Retrieves barter, haggle

(D) Reversal is to bankruptcy

134

(A) with the credit card, the public is poured into the computer (B) user, transaction and goods alike are obsolesced And become information and imagery (C) computer as tribal memory bank (D) you need another card to validate your card … Loss of card is loss of identity; requires that you make a new persona Or… (A) Masks that money can buy great danger is loss of face (B) the breakdown of hardware (C) Nothing fixed beforehand; the identities are as fluid as the haggle Bargain-hunting: occupation of the rich (D) the corporate image The creditor as cop

135

Corporate Body

I n f l at i o n Left page (A) Amplifies uncertainty (B) Obsolesces money, fixed values “the best things in life are free...” (C) Retrieves barter and haggle, play and gamble (D) Reversal: stagflation? Depression?

136

Corporate Body

I n f l at i o n uncertainty

barter and haggle, play and gamble

stagflation? depression?

E

F

R

O

money, fixed values “the best things in life are free...”

137

Corporate body

C o u rt Left page Enhances ambition and opportunities Pushes aside the bourgeois Retrieves the heroic dream Reverses into bureaucracy Right page the heart of the state Shakespeare employs all five divisions of rhetoric (the integrated word) in the following lines in which the belly speaks to the members of the body: “True it is, my incorporate friends,” quoth he That I receive the general food at first, Which you do live upon; and fit it is; Because I am the store-house and the shop Of the whole body: but, if you do remember, I send it through the rivers of your blood, Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o’ the brain;... --Coriolanus Harley Shands, psychologist, answers “no,” to the question, “Is the mind in the brain?” It’s in the whole body at once. Shakespeare links the court, the heart and the brain in a way familiar to his age. The court as institution wooed the best talents. The function of the fox-hunter is to keep the businessman in his place. --P. Wyndham Lewis 139

C o u rt The heart of the state

Enhances ambition and opportunities Pushes aside the bourgeois Retrieves the heroic dream Reverses into bureaucracy

 

140

Corporate body / Heart

Shakespeare employs all five divisions of rhetoric (the integrated word) in the following lines in which the belly speaks to the members of the body: “True it is, my incorporate friends,” quoth he That I receive the general food at first, Which you do live upon; and fit it is; Because I am the store-house and the shop Of the whole body: but, if you do remember, I send it through the rivers of your blood, Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o’ the brain... --Coriolanus Harley Shands, psychologist, answers “no,” to the question, “Is the mind in the brain?” It’s in the whole body at once. Shakespeare links the court, the heart and the brain in a way familiar to his age. The court as institution wooed the best talents. The function of the fox-hunter is to keep the businessman in his place. (Wyndham Lewis)

1 41

C ity Left page (A) Intensifies the centralizing of all human activities (B) Obsolesces the countryside, the rural (C) Retrieves homeostasis, bustle (D) reverses into suburb; breakdown of centralism Right page (a) ...forming a service environment arts, sciences, politics, economics, markets, money, mail... (b) (c) ...”paralysis” of the tribal village via. equilibrium dream of the pastoral: paralysis--enchantment of the heart

Levi-Strauss noted (of the Burmese) that their houses "reacted immediately and with great flexibility to their presence, their every movement. The house was, in fact, subject to the householder, whereas with us the opposite is the case. The village served the villagers as a coat of light elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a mammoth scale... (Tristes Tropiques, page 198) 143

C ity Intensifies the centralizing of all human activities Obsolesces the countryside, the rural Retrieves homeostasis, bustle

Reverses into suburb; breakdown of centralism  

144

...forming a service environment arts, sciences, politics, economics, markets, money, mail...

...“paralysis” of the tribal village via. equilibrium dream of the pastoral: paralysis--enchantment of the heart Levi-Strauss noted of the Burmese that their houses "reacted immediately and with great flexibility to their presence, their every movement. The house was, in fact, subject to the householder, whereas with us the opposite is the case. The village served the villagers as a coat of light elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a mammoth scale... --Tristes Tropiques, page 198    

145

Wa l l e d C i t y Left page (A) Enhances social diversity and power (B) Obsolesces the nomadic (C) Retrieves the vortex of power; the focal centre-with-margins (D) Reversal mode: hi-rise, skyscraper Right page (a) Levi-Strauss: The village served the villagers as a coat of light elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a mammoth scale... Tristes Tropiques, page 198 (b) i.e., the city as vortex of power; the city as mask (c) As centre of paralysis, it holds together (“against loosening”) and focuses social energies “...a citizen of no mean city...” --St. Paul (d) “Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men” --William Empson, "Legal Fiction" walls become the city

1 47

Wa l l e d C i t y Enhances social diversity and power

Obsolesces the nomadic Retrieves the vortex of power; the focal centre-with-margins

Reversal mode: hi-rise, skyscraper  

148

Levi-Strauss: The village served the villagers as a coat of light elastic armour; they wore it as a European woman wears her hats. It was an object of personal adornment on a mammoth scale... --Tristes Tropiques, page 198 i.e., the city as vortex of power; the city as mask As centre of paralysis, it holds together (“against loosening”) and focuses social energies “...a citizen of no mean city...” --St. Paul “Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men” --William Empson, "Legal Fiction" walls become the city

 

149

Wa r Left page (A) Intensifies passions, and goals (B) Obsolesces leisure and luxuries (C) Retrieves camaraderie, team spirit (D) reverses into research, social science, and double-agentry Right page (a) hate rage togetherness purpose via. Flag-waving Speeds up the hardware economy and intensifies specialism the outer goals of conquest and territory (b) tourism and mere consumerism obsolesces boredom (boredom = rage spread thin) (c) tribal wholeness blood brothers retrieves lost identities, forges new ones retrieves corporate enterprise and social organization and invention and development on a massive scale (d) reverses to inner goal and software, knowledge espionage mainly sociological study and data-gathering Sam Lilley (Men, Machines and History, pp. 128, 196) speaks of “...the forcing-house of war, with technicians, factories and government funds,” and notes, for example, of the development of jet propulsion, “frustration in peace, followed by immense effort and quick success...” Another case in point is radar and its development

151

Wa r Intensifies passions, and goals

Obsolesces leisure and luxuries Retrieves camaraderie, team spirit

Reverses into research, social science, and double-agentry

Sam Lilley (Men, Machines and History, pp. 128, 196) speaks of “...the forcing-house of war, with technicians, factories and government funds,” and notes, for example, of the development of jet propulsion, “frustration in peace, followed by immense effort and quick success...”

152

hate rage togetherness purpose via. Flag-waving Speeds up the hardware economy and intensifies specialism the outer goals of conquest and territory tourism and mere consumerism obsolesces boredom (boredom = rage spread thin) tribal wholeness blood brothers retrieves lost identities, forges new ones retrieves corporate enterprise and social organization and invention and development on a massive scale reverses to inner goal and software, knowledge espionage mainly sociological study and data-gathering

Another case in point is radar and its development  

153

Corporate Body

C o m m it te e Left page (A) Enhances corporate image of authority (B) Obsolesces individual responsibility (C) Retrieves dialogue (D) Reverses from Job to Role Right page (a) via position papers (all xeroxed) (b) via role playing (c) familiarity breeds consensus (d) the subliminal again ...a case of Jorgensens’s Law: In committee, nobody makes decisions (see Watergate). Simply deliberate until the situation has changed, then describe (re-cognize) that, thereby making it official.  

154

Corporate Body

C o m m it te e the subliminal again A case of Jorgensens’s Law: In committee, nobody makes decisions (see Watergate). Simply deliberate until the situation has changed, then describe (recognize) that, thereby making it official. The Divine Committee?

via position papers (all xeroxed) Corporate image of authority

job to role

E

F

R

O

dialogue

individual responsibility

familiarity breeds consensus

via role-playing

155

Corporate body / the fake

T h e Fa ke (A) Amplifies the real (B) Obsolesces the genuine (C) Retrieves the making process

(D) Reversal: the genuine fake  

156

Fake 2

(a) that is, the product, by repetition (b) Reduces market value (c) I.e., discovery Picasso: “I always paint fakes.” The fake is always a retrieval job--performed on some other form. It is dangerously close to being an art form. The genuine fake transcends matching. (d) The genuine fake is the world of the real, of experience Figure and ground reverse. As in Gresham’s law (bad money drives good money out of circulation), the good was ground, now becomes figure, while the bad, which was figure, now by repetition becomes ground. The merger of the two is the formula for monstrosity.

Precision and miniaturization are techniques for fake and for art. Japan has finally produced a transistorized version of Western civilization (in miniature)? A fake Monet by Picasso might well be worth more than a mere Monet.  

157

C h a p t e r Fo u r M iscellaneous tet rads

77. Law of Implementation 78. Law of Obsolescence 79. Law of Etherealization 80. Law of Equilibrium 82. Subliminal 83. Rear-View Mirror 84. User as Content: The Medium is the Message 85. Organized Ignorance 86, 87, 88. Monarchy/Republicanism/Electric politics 89. Unisex Heterosexuality Homosexuality / Lesbianism 91. Avogadro’s Law 93. First Law of Thermodynamics 94. Second Law of Thermodynamics 103. The Tetrad 104. Verbum (Utterance) 105. Metaphor Missing Link Stress Pastoral (poetry) The Novel … Dramatic Monologue Railroad Rail underground

159

Gunpowder Oxygen Parmenides Pension The Atom Atomic Structure Periodic Table Dynamite Life … Lode-stone

160

L aw o f I m p l e m e n t at i o n The law that states that the new form must always be used to perform the old function, e.g., using computers to speed up accountancy, movies on TV, et al. Left page (A) Enhances the old (B) Obsolesces the new (C) Retrieves ground as figure (D) Reversal: reveals the new Right page (a) (b) figure becomes ground by submerging the new in the old. (c) old cliches retrieved as new archetypes (art forms), e.g., “old silents” (d) Old movies advertise the world of difference in the TV medium, i.e., few will “work” on TV.

161

L aw o f O b s o l e s c e n c e Left page (A) Enhancement or intensification of any form / action / service via repetition or use (B) entails the relegating of the form / action / service to the subliminal level of awareness while its content monopolizes the attention of the user. (C) Older, now archetypal forms are pushed (back) to the surface of attention. (D) Reversal of form is into the matrix of innovation elitism. Right page —from cliché to archetype Ashes to Newcastle? Between (a) and (b): say it with locomotives? Between (b) and (c): entails sentimentalism Between (c) and (d): and nostalgia Following (d): —revivals camp the mythic Opposite (a), (b), and (c): When the individual scientist can take a paradigm for granted, he need no longer, in his major works, attempt to build his field anew, starting from first principles and justifying the use of each concept introduced. That can be left to the writer of textbooks. Given a textbook, however, the creative scientist can begin his research where it leaves off and this concentrate exclusively upon the subtlest and most esoteric aspects of the natural phenomena that concern his group. —Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 21-22 Opposite (d): The Organization of Ignorance. For example, consider: ...They had, that is, achieved a paradigm that proved able to guide the whole group’s research. Except with the advantage of hindsight, it is hard to find another criterion that so clearly proclaims a field of science. (Kuhn, p. 220) and: Both during pre-paradigm periods and during the crises that lead to large-scale changes of paradigm, scientists usually develop many speculative and unarticulated theories that can themselves point the way to discovery. (Kuhn, p. 61)

L aw o f O b s o l e s c e n c e Enhancement or intensification of any form / action / service via repetition or use

Entails the relegating of the form / action / service to the subliminal level of awareness while its content monopolizes the attention of the user.

Older, now archetypal forms are pushed (back) to the surface of attention

 

164

Reversal of form is into the matrix of innovation elitism.

Say it with Locomotives?

Entails sentimentalism

And nostalgia

.

When the individual scientist can take a paradigm for granted, he need no longer, in his major works, attempt to build his field anew, starting from first principles and justifying the use of each concept introduced. That can be left to the writer of textbooks. Given a textbook, however, the creative scientist can begin his research where it leaves off and thus concentrate exclusively upon the subtlest and most esoteric aspects of the natural phenomena that concern his group. —Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 21-22

The Organization of Ignorance. For example, consider: ...They had, that is, achieved a paradigm that proved able to guide the whole group’s research. Except with the advantage of hindsight, it is hard to find another criterion that so clearly proclaims a field of science. (Kuhn, p. 220) and: Both during pre-paradigm periods and during the crises that lead to large-scale changes of paradigm, scientists usually develop many speculative and unarticulated theories that can themselves point the way to discovery. (Kuhn, p. 61) Revivals

camp the mythic

165

A N ot e o n O b s o l e s c e n c e * When print or the motor car is referred to as “obsolete,” many people assume that it is therefore doomed to speedy extinction. A casual glance at the historical record indicates the contrary. Gutenberg did not discourage handwriting. There is a great deal more handwriting done even in the age of the typewriter than was ever done before printing. The motor car has been obsolete for some time, but it may be some quite irrelevant aspect of the car that will finally finish it off. The car, as a means of concentrating workers, or polluting environments with both hardware and smog, seems to continue quite merrily. Its persistence in spite of numerous inconveniences may be due to some hidden factor such as its simulation of the space capsule, providing a carapace for the human organism in an ever more intimidating environment. In other words, transportation may not be the reason for the continuance of the car at all. Obsolescence is a very large and mysterious subject which has had very little attention in relation to its importance. The present papers may draw attention to this aspect as refuse, garbage, trash, junk, and thus help awareness of the role of obsolescence in sparking creativity and the invention of new order. 28 August, 1970

*

Ed. note: I found this note among the UMR files while preparing this manuscript: it was not part of the Lost Tetrads. Obsolescence is generally imagined to be a simple matter of course. Such is not the case

166

L aw o f E t h e re a l i z at i o n The developmental tendency is to do ever more and more while using less and less material hardware to do it. Left page (A) Enhances content (B) Obsolesces more and more hardware (C) Retrieves medieval alchemist (D) Reverses: figure becomes ground Right page (a) software (b) …from steam engine to electric motor (c) with the electric “information-movers,” retrieves the discarnate, angelic being : how many telephone operators can dance on the head of a pin? (d) Eventually everything is done with nothing. Transportation becomes transformation: An obvious social-psychological result of the railroad was a new consciousness of time. There were two distinct aspects involved in this change: first, an increasing tempo of life that had to be more closely regulated by time; and second, the substitution of standard time for individual or local time. —Bruce Mazlish, The Railroad and the Space Program (Cambridge, Mass.: M. I. T. Press, 1965), page 179.

168

L aw o f E t h e re a l i z at i o n “The developmental tendency ... is to do ever more and more with less and less material [hardware] to do it.” Eventually everything is done with nothing. Transportation becomes transformation: “An obvious socialpsychological result of the railroad was a new consciousness of time. There were two distinct aspects involved in this change: first, an increasing tempo of life that had to be more closely regulated by time; and second, the substitution of standard time for individual or local time.”* Software

content

E

F

R

O

medieval alchemist with the electric “information movers,” retrieves the discarnate, angelic being: how many telephone operators can dance on the head of a pin?

*





figure becomes ground

more and more hardware

...from steam engine to electric motor 

Bruce Mazlish, The Railroad and the Space Program (Cambridge,

Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965), page 179. 169

L aw o f E q u i l i b r i u m

[ S I S C *]

Left page (A) Any input into a situation amplifies or intensifies or inflates or enhances (distorts) some aspect of the situation (B) Thereby the existing homeostasis is pushed aside, obsolesced (C) And an older, pre-existing and previously-obsolesced mode of equilibrium is retrieved, restored, re-created (D) When pushed to its limits, the entire system reverses its characteristics and assumes one of the possible complementary postures.

Scientific fact and theory are not categorically separable, except perhaps within a single tradition of normalscientific practice. That is why the unexpected discovery is not simply factual in its import and why the scientists’ world is qualitatively transformed as well as quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory —T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970), page 7.

Right page Opposite (a): The second of these models is the balance, the pair of scales that yields the concept of stable equilibrium, with its implication that the adverse reactions must be the greater, the more the true position of balance has been disturbed. The notion of dike, of “nothing too much,” of the golden mean, and the statue holding the scales of justice in front of many Western lawcourts testify to its suggestive power. Both wheel and balance suggest movement that eventually returns to the original position, “The more it changes, the more it stays the same. —Karl W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government (Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), pages 25-26.

*

Ed note: Acronym: Structural Impact; Sensory Closure.

Just after (b) and straddling (c): Wyndham Lewis pointed out that the well-adjusted man, the man in a canoe or at a typewriter or “at home” in his urban environment . . . is a robot. The artist is his enemy. Art is to upset the numb balance, for “dereglement de tous les sens” (Rimbaud). (d) “In other words, in addition to their specific actions, all agents to which we are exposed also produce a non-specific increase in the need to perform adaptive functions and thereby to re-establish normalcy...” --H. Selye, Stress Without Distress, page 28. Find, if you can, in what you cannot change. Search then the Ruling Passion: There alone, The Wild are constant and the Cunning known; The Fool consistent, and the False sincere; Priests, Princes, Women, no dissemblers here. This clue once found unravels all the rest... --Alexander Pope ...and bless’d are those Whose blood and judgment are so well comingled That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger To sound what stop she please ... --Shakespeare, Hamlet, III.ii.73-76

171

Subliminal* (A) Intensifies private identity (B) Obsolesces corporate images, group merge, participation (C) Retrieves maker, scop (D) Reverses into isolation alienation artist exile From the subliminal to the insufferable?

 

*

Ed. note: By which we meant having a subliminal area at all.

172

Subliminal

 

artist exile alienation isolation

private identity

maker, scop

From the subliminal to the insufferable?

E

F

R

O corporate images, group merge, participation

173

R e a r V i e w M i r ro r The Foreseeable Past Left page (A) Enhances the past (B) Obsolesces the present (C) Retrieves the future as percept (D) Reversal: merges the past and the future into simultaneous awareness Right page (a) Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. --T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton,” ll. 1-10 (b) But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity --Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress” (c) The forseeable future: “Coming events cast their shadows before them.” The misunderstanding of this aspect of the Rear-View Mirror is an example of the power of language to paralyze perception. (d) What do you see in the rear-view mirror? The back-seat driver! Or . . . the truck about to overtake you.

R e a r V i e w M i r ro r The Foreseeable Past

Enhances the past

Obsolesces the present

Retrieves the future as percept

Reversal: merges the past and the future into simultaneous awareness

176

Rear View Mirror

2

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. —T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton,” ll. 1-10 But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity —Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress” The forseeable future: “Coming events cast their shadows before them.” The misunderstanding of this aspect of the Rear-View Mirror is an example of the power of language to paralyze perception. What do you see in the rear-view mirror? The back-seat driver! Or . . . the truck about to overtake you.

177

U s e r a s C o nte nt

The Medium is the Message Left page (A) Enhances discovery, fresh awareness (B) Obsolesces the immediately prior sensibility, older forms of himself (the user) (C) Retrieves an even older form of his persona--the replay retrieves awareness, the meaning (D) Reverses into numbness: missing the meaning but having the experience

Information theory also tells us that the amount of information transmitted in an encounter cannot exceed the encoding and decoding abilities of the participants. —Nan Lin, The Study of Human Communication (N.Y.: Bobbs-Merrill, Inc., 1970, p. 54.

Right page (a) discovery-by-put-on -- as a fish knows water The Medium is the Message (b) involving change of identity pattern (c) like a new suit -- reveals the real you: user as art form (d) the merge with ground -- user merges his sensibilities with those that are the mode of the medium: reversal is to the banal -- he becomes a robot (the normal human condition). The artist as enemy of the robot.

178

O r g a n i z e d I g n o ra n c e Left page (A) Enhances organizing / access to mass ignorance, via the mass (B) Obsolesces expert knowledge (C) Retrieves spontaneity of awareness, playfulness (D) Reverses into private discovery--“the one guy in a million...” Right page: this quote splashed down the side, relates to all four

In the perusal of philosophical works, I have been greatly benefitted by a resolve, which in the antithetic form, and with the allowed quaintness of an adage or maxim, I have been accustomed to word thus: until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (N.Y.: Everymans Library, 1956), page 126.

 

179

M O N A RC H Y (A) Enhances the iconic-charismatic the hereditary - integral (how divine) (B) Obsolesces the tribal democracy pushes aside kinship systems where all are kings (C) Retrieves the hot-situation emergency strategy (D) Reverses into the fragmented-representational

REPUBLICANISM (A) Intensifies the President, as private/individual representational (B) Obsolesces the hereditary and charismatic (C) Retrieves, re-cast, the tribal democracy (D) Reverses into: monarchy, via police state as system breaks down

ELECTRIC POLITICS (A) Amplifies bureaucracy (B) Obsolesces politics (C) Retrieves C-M diplomacy (secret) (D) Reverses into: ubiquitous, Emperor’s image

180

Unisex Left page (A) Enhances role-playing (B) Obsolesces sexes (C) Retrieval mode: the pre-pubescent infant (D) Reversal mode: the non-human, nihilism Right page (a) via mask and costume: corporate get-up the merging of performer and audience (b) all sexes at once = no sexes no identities either (c) that is, the pre-sexual / non-sexual (d) the perversion of the “oneness of Nature” via the merging of man and animal Cf.: “glitter” band rock treating pets as if they were human children contraceptives for doggies, etc. treating humans as if they were animals or machines

 

181

UNISEX the perversion of “the oneness of Nature” via. the merging of man and animal; Cf.: treating pets as if they were human children; via mask and costume: contraceptives for doggies; corporate get-up; treating humans as if they the merging of performer were animals or machines and audience nihilism role-playing the non-human,

pre-pubescent infant

 

that is, the pre-sexual, non-sexual

182

E

F

R

O sexes all sexes at once = no sexes, no identities either

H E T E RO S E X UA L I TY complementarity of sexes

role-playing

homo-sex narcissism

E

F

R

O pre-pubescent, non-sexual

183

H O M O S E X UA L I TY / L E S B I A N I S M repeat, sameness

Narcissus hermaphrodite Ouroboros  

184

unisex

E

F

R

O complementarity of sexes, the opposite sex

Av o g a d ro ’ s L aw

"In any given volume of a pure gas there will be the same number of atoms as in the same volume of any other pure gas" (where temperature and pressure are standard)

Left page (A) Intensifies quantification and uniformity (B) Obsolesces the qualitative (C) Retrieves the atoms (D) Reverses into the holistic Right page (a) characterized by abstraction and uniformity of parameters (b) pushes aside the old idea of properties pure gas (c) (d) the quantum-mechanical  

186

T h e N EW G E N E T I C S The new dogma: all life-“data” or “information” are encoded in DNA and RNA: the job is to puzzle out the code. (A) Amplifies one-to-one matching of observable/behavioural factors (B) Obsolesces vitalism, the mysterious, the unobservable (C) Retrieves uncertainty, the “sport” (D) Reverses into: Animism



enhances the mechanical code-view of life



pushes aside the ecological and environmental



blood will tell…



from logical to allegorical

187

F i r st L aw o f T h e r m o d y n a m i c s The Law of Conservation of Energy: energy can neither be created nor be destroyed Left page (A) Amplifies “matching”, of input-output via equilibrium quantification (B) Obsolesces “making” and disequilibrium, all qualitative or non-visual features (C) Retrieves the Plenum (D) Reverses into vacuum, the empty, the void Right page (A) or, “the quantity of energy involved in a transformation remains constant, though it may change in form.” (B) --this assumes a closed system, a figure without a ground. The quantity of energy INSIDE remains a constant, while there is no interaction between inside and outside. Obsolesces outsides, in order to permit equilibrium. (C) “…regardless of its form or the way it is measured, energy can neither be created nor destroyed: the total energy associated with a thermodynamic conversion remains constant. This is the First Law of Thermo dynamics.” (P. 566) (D) ...the work required to accomplish a given change in state depends only on the initial and final states of the system, and is independent of the path by which the change in state is accomplished. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of the Sciences, p. 573 188

S e c o n d L aw o f T h e r m o d y n a m i c s

Entropy the law of "degradation of energy": energy like water, runs downhill “Heat won’t flow from a cooler to a hotter.”

Left page (a) Intensifies awareness of homogeneity (b) Obsolesces the acoustic mystical / musical order (c) Retrieves the pre-visual (Greek) notion of Chaos (d) Reverses into: generation of living organisms Right page (a) as energy levels try to “level off and smooth out” (b) via the Newtonian, the clockwork Universe is running down (c) God the Great Clock-winder (d) Instead of ever-decreasing order, spontaneous generation of new orders "An analysis of the Carnot cycle indicates the maximum amount of transferred heat that can be converted into useful work, the remainder being unavailable as work. To convert heat into work, energy is transferred from a high-temperature source to the heat engine. The engine converts some of that energy into work and rejects the remainder to a lower-temperature receiver. No deviations from this procedure have been observed, and thus, … appears ... the law of degradation of energy. The eternal struggle to smooth out variations in energy levels is one of the most pervasive forces on the earth ... Applied to a system in which heat is transferred to an apparatus and part of it is converted into work, the law of degradation of energy is referred to as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. An important state property called entropy is used extensively to evaluate this phenomenon. Entropy is a measure of the unavailable energy of a process." McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of the Sciences, pp. 566-567.

189

Te t ra d * Left page (a) Intensifies awareness of inclusive structural process (b) Obsolesces logical analysis and “efficient causality” (c) Retrieval mode: metaphor (d) Reversal—technology (hardware) becomes word (software) Right page (a) i.e., structural process of interplay in technological innovation (b) obsolesces visual connections and sequence: the four factors in the tetrad do not postulate any chronological sequence: All the factors are in play at the same time. (c) In stressing the verbal character of all human artifacts the tetrads and the dichotomy between the conventional ideas of the verbal and non-verbal expression. All technology is utterance, is verbal. (d) The Aristotelian teaching of four causes lasted in the official Western culture until the Renaissance. When modern science was born, formal and final causes were left aside as standing beyond the reach of experiment; and material causes were taken for granted in connection with all natural happenings -- though with a definitely

*

Ed. note: Laws of Media has a tetrad on the tetrad, page 224, but without the glosses (above) we had written for it.

190

non-Aristotelian meaning, since in the modern world-view matter is essentially the subject of change, not “that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists.” Hence, of the four Aristotelian causes, only the efficient cause was regarded as worthy of scientific research. (Bunge--page 32) Modern thought, while retaining the externality of causation, has preferred other definitions of the efficient cause. One of the clearest of them was given by Galileo, who defined the efficient cause as the necessary and sufficient condition for the appearance of something: “that and no other is to be called cause, at the presence of which the effect always follows, and at whose removal the effect disappears.” (Mario Bunge, Causality - Meridian Books, Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Co., 1963, 1970) page 33  

191

Te t ra d (a) Intensifies awareness of inclusive structural process (b) Obsolesces logical analysis and efficient causality

(c) Retrieval mode: metaphor

(d) Reversal—technology (hardware) becomes word (software)

Modern thought, while retaining the externality of causation, has preferred other definitions of the efficient cause. One of the clearest of them was given by Galileo, who defined the efficient cause as the necessary and sufficient condition for the appearance of something”: “that and no other is to be called cause, at the presence of which the effect always follows, and at whose removal the effect disappears.” (Mario Bunge, Causality - Meridian Books, Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Co., Meridian Books, 1963, 1970) page 33

192

Tetrad 2 (a) i.e., structural process of interplay in technological innovation (b) obsolesces visual connections and sequence: the four factors in the tetrad do not postulate any chronological sequence. All the factors are in play at the same time. (c) In stressing the verbal character of all human artifacts the tetrads end the dichotomy between the conventional ideas of the verbal and non-verbal expression: All technology is utterance, is verbal. (d) The Aristotelian teaching of four causes lasted in official Western culture until the Renaissance. When modern science was born, formal and final causes were left aside as standing beyond the reach of experiment; and material causes were taken for granted in connection with all natural happenings -- though with a definitely nonAristotelian meaning, since in the modern world-view matter is essentially the subject of change, not “that out of which a subject comes to be and which persists.” Hence, of the four Aristotelian causes, only the efficient cause was regarded as worthy of scientific research. (Bunge - p 32)

193

Ve r b u m

--

U t t e ra n c e

Word : externalization : utterance : outer-ance -- the realm of the Genuine Fake Left page (a) Intensifies and crystallizes percept -- as word (thing) (b) Obsolesces the merely sensory via perceptual interplay (c) Retrieval: transference of power from things to word-as-vortex (d) Reverses into the conceptual (replay of meaning-minus-the-experience) Right page (a) “There is nothing in the intellect that is not first in the senses” (b) ...that is, input alone is not experience (one can have the experience but miss the meaning...) (c) word, or utterance, serves as replay, for re-cognition: the original impact and experience are retrievable for examination (d) the mere fake "coining and uttering" --the counterfeiter All human artifacts are externalizations, are outer-ings or utterings of man. They have, like speech and language, each their syntax and their grammars. “Le mot juste”—the exact word. To an Imagist, says Mr. Aldington, it “does not mean the word which exactly describes the object in itself, it means the exact word which brings the effect of that object before the reader as it presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing the poem.” (from J. Isaacs, The Background of Modern Poetry New York: Dutton & Co., 1952, p. 45) 194

Lain-Entralgo’s Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity bridges between verbal semantics and magic: “Only this is certain: that charms for therapeutic purpose already existed at the birth of Greek culture.... The speaker of the charm always endeavours to compel Nature in some measure.” (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1970, page 23) Levi-Strauss, in Structural Anthropology, illustrates the same factor of verbal efficacy or magic in the obstetrical incantation: The purpose of the song is to facilitate difficult childbirth. Its use is somewhat exceptional, since native women of Central and South America have easier deliveries than women of Western societies. The intervention of the shaman is thus rare and occurs in case of failure, at the request of the midwife... The delivery takes place, and the song ends with a statement of the precautions taken... (New York: Basic Books, 1963, page 187 Finally, one should remember that the word was considered a remedy of the soul… that the logos was often named a physician. —Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein, - Asclepius (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1945), pp. 207-8

1 95

Ve r b u m

--

U t t e ra n c e

Word : externalization : utterance : outer-ance --the realm of the genuine fake Intensifies and crystallizes percept , -as-word (thing) Obsolesces the merely sensory via perceptual interplay Retrieval: transference of power from things to word (-as-vortex) Reverses in to the conceptual (replay of meaning-minus-the-experience)

“Le mot juste”--the exact word. To an Imagist, says Mr. Aldington, it “does not mean the word which exactly describes the object in itself, it means the exact word which brings the effect of that object before the reader as it presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing the poem.” (from J. Isaacs, The Background of Modern Poetry, New York: Dutton & Co., 1952, p. 45) Lain-Entralgo’s Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity bridges between verbal semantics and magic: “Only this is certain: that charms for therapeutic purpose already existed at the birth of Greek culture.... The speaker of the charm always endeavors to compel Nature in some measure.” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970, page 23) 196

Verbum 2

“There is nothing in the intellect that is not first in the senses” ...that is, input alone is not experience (One can have the experience but miss the meaning...) word, or utterance, serves as replay, for re-cognition: the original impact and experience are retrievable for examination the mere fake --coining and uttering--the counterfeiter All human artifacts are externalizations, are outer-ings or utterings of man. They have, like speech and language, each their syntax and their grammars. Levi-Strauss, in Structural Anthropology, illustrates the same factor of verbal efficacy or magic in the obstetrical incantation: The purpose of the song is to facilitate difficult childbirth. Its use is somewhat exceptional, since native women of Central and South America have easier deliveries than women of Western societies. The intervention of the shaman is thus rare and occurs in case of failure, at the request of the midwife... The delivery takes place, and the song ends with a statement of the precautions taken... (New York: Basic books, 1963, page 187) “Finally, one should remember that the word was considered a remedy of the soul..., that the logos was often named a physician.” --Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1945, pages 207-8 197

M et a p h o r * Left Page (A) Enhances awareness of relations (B) Obsolesces simile, metonymy, connected logic (C) Retrieves understanding, “meaning” via replay in another mode (D) Reverses into Allegory Right page “…When the transition is complete, the profession will have changed its view of the field, its methods and its goals. One perceptive historian, viewing a classic case of a science’s reorientation by paradigm change, recently described it as “picking up the other end of the stick,” a process that involves “handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework.” --T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (University of Chicago Press, 1970), page 85 (a) The role of metaphor is the elevation of hidden ground into sensibility. For example, “hearts of oak,” where the hidden ground is “hearts of our people.” A double figureground relation is established so that: “ordinary hearts are to ordinary wood as these hearts are to oak”, and the complementary structure also applies: “ordinary hearts are to these hearts as ordinary wood is to oak.”

*

Ed. note: Metaphor and the tetrad on metaphor are the heart of Laws of Media, which has an abbreviated and somewhat different version of this tetrad on p. 235.

198

(b) Technologies, like words, are metaphors. They too involve the transformation of the user insofar as they establish new relationships between him and his environments. A double figure-ground relationship is brought into play, with: natural man is to man-withartifacts as the natural environment is to the man-made environment. And the complementary “natural man is to the natural environment as man-with-technology is to the man-made environments.” (c) The Laws of the Media are structural forms closely related to metaphor. The parts of the tetrad have the same complementary character: Retrieval is to Obsolescence as Amplification is to Reversal - and Retrieval is to Amplification as Obsolescence is to Reversal (d) “The existence of this strong network of commitments --conceptual, theoretical, instrumental and methodological—is a principle source of the metaphor that relates normal science to puzzle-solving.” T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (op. cit., p. 42) “To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors...” (T.S. Kuhn, op. cit., page 17)

199

M et a p h o r *

Enhances awareness of relations

Obsolesces simile, metonymy, connected logic

Retrieves understanding, "meaning" via replay in another mode

Reverses into Allegory

*

Ed. note: Metaphor and the tetrad on metaphor are the very heart of Laws of Media.

Metaphor

2

…When the transition is complete, the profession will have changed its view of the field, its methods and its goals. One perceptive historian, viewing a classic case of a science’s reorientation by paradigm change, recently described it as “picking up the other end of the stick,” a process that involves “handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework. T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (University of Chicago Press, 1970), page 85 The role of metaphor is the elevation of hidden ground into sensibility. For example, “hearts of oak,” where the hidden ground is “hearts of our people.” A double figure-ground relation is established so that: “ordinary hearts are to ordinary wood as these hearts are to oak” and the complementary structure also applies: “ordinary hearts are to these hearts as ordinary wood is to oak.” Technologies, like words, are metaphors. They similarly involve the transformation of the user insofar as they establish new relationships between him and his environments. A double figureground relationship is brought into play, with: natural man is to man-with-artifacts as the natural environment is to the man-made environment. and the complementary, natural man is to the natural environment as man-with-technology is to the man-made environments.

 

201

Metaphor

 

202

3

Metaphor

4

The Laws of the Media are structural forms closely related to metaphor. The parts of the tetrad have the same complementary character:

and

Retrieval is to Obsolescence as Amplification is to Reversal Retrieval is to Amplification as Obsolescence is to Reversal The existence of this strong network of commitments-conceptual, theoretical, instrumental and methodological--is a principal source of the metaphor that relates normal science to puzzle-solving. T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Op. Cit., p. 42)

To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors...” (Kuhn, Op. Cit., page 17)

203

Missing Link (a) idea of connection relatedness among [forms] as zero > algebraic equations (b) random disorder (c) chain of being (Porphyrian Tree) (d) natural selection from field chance and necessity

205

Private body / stress

S t re s s “Derailment of this G. A. S. [General Adaptation Syndrome] mechanism produces diseases of adaptation, that is, stress diseases.” --Hans Selye, The Stress of Life (rev. 1976, page 56) (A) Direct effect of stressor (B) Upsets homeostasis (C) Enlists hidden action of tissue defense -- antibody (latent) (D) diseases of adaptation  

206

Private body / stress

S t re s s “Derailment of this G. A. S. [General Adaptation Syndrome] mechanism produces diseases of adaptation, that is, stress diseases.” --Hans Selye, The Stress of Life (rev. 1976, page 56) Direct effect of stressor

Enlists hidden action of tissue defense --anti-body (latent)

Diseases of adaptation

E

F

R

O Upsets homeostasis

207

P a st o ra l (poetry)

“I wandered lonely as a crowd…”

outside to be alone

emotion recollected in tranquillity?

?

E

F

R

O city  

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours;….

208

T h e N ove l

The real, New reality

Historical chronicle

Fantasy, Science Fiction

E

F

R

O Romance

209

T h e N ove l (alternate)

Biography with romance

The marvelous, mysterious

210

Fantasy

E

F

R

O Romance from narrative

D ra m at i c M o n o l o g u e * (Browning)

Personal disclosure

 

*

Dramatic mode: oral delivery

Dialogue

E

F

R

O Soliloquy (inner)

Ed. note: This ends the collection of "lost tetrads." The following Laws were among those not usually submitted.

211

R a i l ro a d Enhances the Rocket -- speed Obsolesces horses Retrieves easy surface inter-communication Runaway world Reversal: heavy freight

R a i l ( u n d e r g ro u n d ) Enhances trough rail -- canal; embedded Sureness of mine track Obsolesces old mine floor Retrieves hard surface Reversal: above ground, raised on ties Standard gauge

212

G u n p owd e r Extends range of projectile Obsolesces merely individual personal combat; armour Retrieves the superman -- the group charge Flips into automated death  

213

O x yg e n Enhances the idea of oxygen as a pollutant of air Obsolesces phlogiston Retrieves the idea of purification The primal fire-bringer (Prometheus) Flips from primal purifying, destructive force Into heat-giving, benign environment  

214

Parmenides (A) being (one)

Connection (logic)

(B) many, “resonance,” discontinuity (C) World – egg (D) Platonic duality  

215

Private body

Pension Enhances image of future security Obsolesces thrift Retrieves garden of eating (consumerism) Flips into state of indigence

 

216

T h e At o m (A) velocity of light is constant (no medium) (B) ether (C) the absolute – figure, light – no ground (D) eternal – timeless – relativity theory and / or – (A) that the atom has a nucleus with orbiting electrons (B) idea that nucleus contains electrons (C) the atom as a solar system (D) matter as a field of resonating solar systems

217

At o m i c st r u c t u re Enhances atomic combination Obsolesces the four elements of the Greeks Retrieves the ancient Atomist theory Flips into contemporary atom of Leucippus and Democritus in the form of solar structure (Newtonian theory)

 

218

P e r i o d i c Ta b l e Enhances classification Obsolesces alchemy Retrieves the idea of families of structures Flips into wave theory of Erwin Schrodinger

219

D y n a m ite Enhances explosive power Obsolesces gun powder Retrieves the corporate activity of the miner, and the team and group warfare Flips from corporate war into corporate peace (Cf. Nobel Peace Prize)

 

220

Life Life before death Obsolesces the trivial Retrieves the essential Flips into life after death

Life Life after death Obsolesces the miseries of the present Retrieves intensity Reversal: grave not the goal

Life The grave is not the goal Obsolesces the mediocre Retrieves heroism Reversal: Heaven is my destination

221

L o d e - st o n e Enhances direction – North / South Obsolesces stars – uniformity Retrieves Earth as lode stone Reverses into Gravity theory OR – Enhances directional force Obsolesces centrifugal vortices Retrieves geometry Reversal: simultaneous – electricity – action at a distance (decentral)

222

C h a pt e r F i ve More recent tet rads

Boredom The Shower Street Parking Permits Media Ecology Chat Rooms Central Air Conditioning Groups of four Figure and Ground Murphy's Law Dictionary Alliteration Fashion (clothing) Breast Implants Sexism Cup / Glass Digital Screens Music Direct-to-Disc 

225

B o re d o m

Implosion* predictability diversion feel trapped, insulted**

 

impatience

inattention, pastimes, kill-times interval

* **

explosion

E

F

R

O

rage, violence

attention, focus tolerance

Attention gravitates to me and how I feel about it all. You’re making me sit through this?! Grrr…

226

T h e S h owe r

technology

Control Spontaneity

Waterfall Song

Sitting in a bathtub

E

F

R

O

pool, deluge the weather

  nature

227

S t re e t - P a r k i n g P e r m i t s

POWER

Control over license to park

Tax w/o repres Protection racket

E

F

APOLLONIAN R O Orderly Chaos neighbourhood

(L: Closed crowd)

228

CROWDS

DIONYSIAC

(R; Open crowd)

Media Ecology

Pattern recognition

Rorschach blots

Taxonomy at Speed Of Light

Encyclopedism, the polymath



E

F

R

O

word association

Cultural studies

Sociology

229

Media Ecology





Pattern recognition

Book of Nature Geophysical ecology



230

Programming: culture as art form

E

F

R

O Specialist approach

C h at R o o m

Encounter

Pen-pals Persona and Pose



E

F

R

O

Crowd; tribe; blog?

Real-Life distance



231

C e n t ra l A i r C o n d i t i o n i n g

Enslaves the User; Anaesthetic; Thermostat in each room

Uniform temperature

Comfort

232

Numbness

E

F

R

O Fireplace in each room; Heat, Nature, Fans

G ro u p s o f Fo u r K i t c h e n a n d Ta b l e U t e n s i l s • • • •

Knife E: cutting, dicing, slicing; speeds digestion (smaller pieces); speed, cleavage F: puree? Cuisinart? O: tear with teeth; front teeth; stone chopper, scraper R: dainty morsel; small units; formality

•

Fo r k last to develop E: nails, teeth? Holding, piercing, ease of picking up F: arrow? Spear? Trident? O: manipulation, fingers, textural; claw, hand, side / back teeth R: poise, daintiness, the morsel, formality

• • • •

Spoon E: sip; cupped hand; small portion F: straw? Water wheel, pump? R: bouquet, smell & taste, flavour, daintiness O: drink from bowl, cup; guzzle; informal 

• • •

233

C h o p st i c k s

(liquid) sipping straw (suck)

small, repetitive pincer

prehensile

E

F

R

O

tongue (lapping?) (solid) grip

234

fork, spoon, etc., bare hands big bite, chunk tearing, ripping

T h e Fo u r C a u s e s Fo r m a l Ca u se

• E: user: form, ground/interval between figure and ground • O: specialism • R: all causes at once • F: final; figure alone LHS: gnd RHS: fig • • • •

Efficient Cause

E: process of making O: simultaneous causes R: matter plus maker F: sequence?

Final Cause

• E: the thing in itself • O: ? • R: ? • F: ideal, abstract ? tautology ? isolated figures? NOTE: Final Cause = the ding an sich, the thing-in-itself • • • •

Mate rial Cau se

E: matter O: maker (Efficient cause) R: ? F: form?

235

Fo u r Way s To Wr i t e Syllabary

• • • •

(Usually 50-250 characters) plays up whole sound (consonant plus vowel) obsolesces flow of speech retrieves meaning, in bits flips into song? Babble, scat singing; stutter Phonetic Alphabet

(20-30 characters) enhances split of consonant, vowel, phonemes; knower from known, eye from other senses, abstract matching of sign and sound • obsolesces meanings, morphemes, tie to A language, consciousness of the letters • retrieves sounds . . . in bits • reversal: hermetica, making sense LHS: speed •

Pictog ram

(many thousands of characters: Chinese) • enhances drawing, cartoon as communication • retrieves gestural indication • obsolesces dialect, speech itself, a/any language, sound • reversal: ideogram LHS: poesis

236

Ideog ram

* enhances the signs, conciseness (semiotics), speed, abstractness * retrieves the complex idea, the icon * obsolesces the sounds, mere words * reversal: world as text, as hypertext

Note: As recorded in Electric Language (Stoddart, 1998), p.92: A l p h a b e t is to I d e o g r a m Specialized as Awareness S y l l a b a r y is to P i c t o g r a m

Inclusive Awareness

237

F i g u re a n d G ro u n d

(terms from Gestalt psychology) Figure

• E: focus on one thing at a time [H/D; C/M] • R: ground, in serial mode • O: pattern, LD mode • F: all figures at once, C-M mosaic (LD) LHS: high definition RHS: low definition Ground

* E: low-definition patterns * R: mosaic (of figures) (LD) * O: any one figure, one-at-a-time (HD) * F: monster (LD > HD) LHS: low definition RHS: high definition  

238

M u r p h y ’ s L aw

“If anything CAN go wrong, it will” • • • •

E: spotlights perversity, grievance, luck R: irrational explanation F: health, wit, humour O: rational explanation, precaution

Perversity Grievance Luck

Irrational explanation

Health Wit Humour

E

F

R

O Rational explanation Precaution

239

D i ct i o n a r y • • • •

Fixes meaning, pronunciation, spelling Flips to authority, tyrant Retrieves lexicon, word-hoard Obsolesces oral flux

Fixes meaning, Pronunciation, Spelling

Lexicon Word-hoard

240

Tyrant Authority

E

F

R

O Oral flux

Video Games Participation, process

Virtual

Participatory imagery

war

—all in colour: no B&W

education

(sitting)

(standing)

E

F

R

O

Inner experience (RH) (TV in new mode) “body English”

Outer experience, goals (LH) Hide & Seek, Tag, Outdoor games Physical games, pastimes; reading, Clue, Monopoly, Parcheesi, Croquinole, Snakes & Ladders Pinball, pool …

2 41

A l l i t e rat i o n (e.g., Anglo-Saxon)

Front-rhyme



Echo (irrational) in words

coarse textured language, ideas

E

F

R

O

Senses: ear + gut

Power of music of words

banal, unmusical language

(irrational)



242

meaning as link between words

Fa s h i o n ( C l o t h i n g )

The private

The corporate ( you make the clothes look good)

Your looks

Model

E

F

R

O

Weaponry

Banality

 

243

B re a st I m p l a n t s Audience theatre Conspicuous size

Sagging self-image Attention

244

Breasts as technology; the grotesque

E

F

R

O Nature’s design; modesty; Bypasses / ignores biological function

“Sexism”

Male/Female difference Singularity Rage INEQUALITY



Battle of the Sexes

Rivalry



All equal; Unisex Plurality Boredom

E

F

R

O

EQUALITY

Peace Male, female roles norms

245

Cup / glass • • • •

E: move, store, serve liquids, esp. HOT liquids O: cupped hands R: decorum; stomach as storage? F: pot? cauldron?

Principle of the stomach is that of storage and that of digestion. Each is extended separately. Bowl, tureens, pots, jars, jugs, all sizes; for storing, cooking (a form of digestion, says Lévi-Strauss in The Raw and the Cooked), root cellar, freezer, refrigerator—all extend stomach as storage device.  

246

D i g i t a l S c re e n s

The light bulb acquires content (the screen uses light-emitting diodes) HD Tiny and huge size

Light bulbs Neon sign TV as picture on the wall

Flat screen

E

F

R

O Analog TV, the CRT, the VDU

2 47

Music*

As technology

Perception of individual feelings

Memories

*



E

F

R

O

Perception of mass feelings

Concrete ideas

This tetrad and the next were composed for Paul Hoffert’s 1979 direct-to-disc recording of L’Histoire du Soldat by Igor Stravinsky. They appear in the liner notes.

248

D i re c t - t o - D i s c R e c o r d i n g As technology

The acoustic space (sound fidelity)

The live performance  

 



E

F

R

O

The new technology —digital—which will soon take over

Editing; Conventional tape recording

249

Appendix One Understanding Media Revised – list of proposed chapters U.M.R.

1. The Medium is the Message 2. Media Hot and Cold 3. Chiasmus: Reversal of the Overheated Medium 4. Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis 5. Hybrid Energy 6. Media and Obsolescence 7. Challenge & Collapse: The Nemesis of Creativity 8. Spoken Word – Flower of Evil 9. Written Word – Eye for an Ear 10. Roads and Paper Routes 11. Profile of the Crowd 12. Clothing: Extension of Skin 13. Housing: New Look and Outlook 14. Money: Poor Man’s Credit Card 15. Clocks: Scent of Time 16. The Print: How to Dig It 17. Comics: MAD vestibule to TV 18. Printed Word: Architect of Nationalism 19. Wheel: Bicycle: Aeroplane 20. Photograph: Brothel Without Walls 21. Press: Government by Newsleak 22. Motorcar

251

23. Ads: Keeping Upset with the Joneses 24. Games: E.O.M. (extensions of man) 25: Telegraph: The Social Hormone 26. Typewriter 27. Telephone 28. Phonograph 29. Movies: The Reel World 30. Radio: Tribal Drum 31. TV: The Timid Giant 32. Weapons: War of the Icons 33. Automation: Learning a Living CHAPTERS ADDED 34. Hunter: Cyclops 35. Satellite: End of Nature 36. Vat II et al. (Vatican II) 37. C/A (cliché & archetype) 38. HW/SW (hardware/software) 39. RVM (rear view mirror) 40. Global Theatre cf. satellite 41. East/West (eye – ear) 42. Hertz – Complementarity (unisex) 43. Quid – SI/SC (sensory input/sensory closure) 44. Generation Gap 45. City and the University 46. Joke 47. Media as Masks 48. Moral Approach to Media Problems

252

49. User as Content 50. End of Sex 51. Science Fiction 52. Figure-Ground 53. Slang: Where It’s At 54. Acoustic Space 55. Cassette & ETV & Cable 56. Ecology 57. Image 58. Xerox 59. 20th Century Baedeker 60. Job-Role 61. Cent/decent (centralism/decentralism) 62. T.O.C. (theories of communication)    

253

A p p e n d i x T w o There are just eight possibilities. Each one contains the other seven. EACH ONE IS “THE RIGHT WAY.” They are identical, but for orientation. E F

R O

R O

E F

F E

F O

O R

E R

E R

R E

F O

O F

O R

O F

F E

R E

255

Use as a test case the tetrad for the credit card: E: F: R: O:

credit image (software) debit money (hardware)

Try it all eight ways (in no particular order)— Money O

R

F

E

Image

Credit

Money

Image

Debit

256

Debit

O

F

R

E Credit

Credit

E

F

R

O

Image (hardware)

Debit



Debit

Money R

O

E

F

Money (software)

Credit

Image

Image

Credit

Money

F

E

O

R Debit  

257

Image F

O

E

R

Credit

Debit

Credit

Debit E

R

F

O

Image

Money

Debit

Credit

Money

258

Money

R

E

O

F Image

I N ST RU C T I O N S f o r u s e Try them all. whichever one suits you best at the moment; keep the other seven in reserve. When confronting a new matter, shuffle like a deck of cards and “deal one off the top.” Use

O r,

select one so that top left is the area of which you are confident; go from there. O r,

let top left be the area you thought of first. Could be that of a reversal, or a retrieval, or an obsolescence… The following pages give blank tetrads to copy and use.  

259

E

F

R

O

   

260

R

E

O

F

261

262

F

E

O

R

E

R

F

O

263

264

F

O

E

R

R

O

E

F

265

266

O

R

F

E

O

F

R

E

267

I n d e x o f Te t ra d s “Lost Tetrads” are in bold face Alliteration 242 A n a e st h e s i a  108 At o m  217

At o m i c st r u c t u r e  218 A u d i o t a p e  112–113 Avo g a d r o ’ s L aw  186 B e d  84–85 B i c yc l e  102

Boredom 226 Breast Implants  244 C a b l e T V   12, 119, 120–121, 121–123 C a m e ra   34–35, 36–37 C a s s e t t e T V   124, 125

Central Air Conditioning  232 Chat Room  231 Chopsticks 234 C i t y   143, 144–145 C l o c k  38–39 C l o t h i n g   80–81, 82–83 C o m m i t t e e   154, 155 C o m p a s s  109 C o u r t   139, 140–141 Coracle Kayak Canoe 104–105 C r e d i t c a r d  134–135 Cup / glass  246 D r e a m (c o r p o rat e )  111 D r e a m ( p r i vat e )  110

Dictionary 240 Digital Screens  247

268

Direct-to-Disc Recording  249 D ra m at i c M o n o l o g u e  211 D y n a m i t e  220 Efficient Cause  235 E l e c t r i c M e d i a  116–117 E l e c t r i c P o l i t i c s   13, 180 E l evat o r  70–71 Fa ke  156–157

Fashion (Clothing)  243 Figure and Ground  238 Final Cause  235

F i r st L aw o f T h e r m o d y n a m i c s  188

Fork 233 Formal Cause  235

G u n p owd e r  213

Hat 94

Hete rosexual ity  183 Homosexuality / Lesbianism 184 H o u s e  90–91 H o u s i n g  88–89

Ideogram 236–237 I n f l at i o n   136, 137 I n st a n t Re p l ay   29, 30–31, 32–33, 127, 128–129, 130–131 Knife 233

L aw o f Et h e r e a l i z at i o n  168 L aw o f E q u i l i b r i u m [ S I S C ]  170–171 L aw o f I m p l e m e n t at i o n  161 Law of Obsolescence   163, 164–165 L i f e  221 L o d e - st o n e  222 M a s s M e d i a  132–133

Material Cause  235 Media Ecology  229, 230 M e t a p h o r   198–199, 200–203 M i r r o r  46–47 Missing Link  79, 205 M o n a r c h y   13, 80 M o t o r c a r  106–107 Murphy’s Law  239 Music 248 New Genetics  187 N ove l   209, 210 N u m b e r   76, 77 N u m b e r/ Z e r o  78 O a r  103 O r g a n i z e d I g n o ra n c e  179 O x y g e n  214 P a r m e n i d e s  2215 P a st o ra l  208 P e n  72–73 P e n s i o n  216 P e r i o d i c Ta b l e  219 P e r f u m e  62–63

Phonetic Alphabet  236–237 Pictogram 236–237 P r e s s  86–87 P u r s e  95

R a i l ( u n d e r g r o u n d )  212 R a i l r o a d  212 Rear-View Mirror   12, 175, 176–177

Refrigerator 92

Re p u b l i c a n i s m   13, 180 Ro p e  68–69 S c r ew  66–67 S e c o n d L aw o f T h e r m o d y n a m i c s  189

Sexism 245 Shower 227

S p e c t a c l e s  44–45

Spoon 233 St a i r s  96 St r e s s  206–207 Street-Parking Permits  228 S u b l i m i n a l   172, 173 Syllabary 236–237 Ta l k i n g D r u m  60–61 Te t ra d   190–191, 192–193 U n i s e x   181, 182 U s e r a s C o n t e n t  178 Ve r b u m — U t t e ra n c e  194–195,

196–197 Video Games  241

Wa l l e d C i t y   147, 148–149 Wa r   16–17, 23, 151, 152–153 W h e e l  98–101 W i n d ow  52–53 Wr i t i n g o n St o n e  74–75 Wr i t t e n wo r d   48–49, 50–51 Z i p p e r   24–25, 64

269

Ac k n ow l e d g e m e nt s Several other people shared in composing these items, including Barry Nevitt (co-author with MM of Take Today: The Executive as Drop Out), Harley Parker (co-author with MM of Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting), Bob Logan (Physics professor at the University of Toronto), George Thompson (administrative assistant at the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology, Toronto), and a few others. All of them also contributed to the material in Laws of Media: The New Science. There is no way to credit the contributions of hundreds of students and visitors to the Centre who were roped into playing with the tetrads and giving opinions and criticism as we developed them and tried them on every possible subject.

 

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B i b l i o g ra p h y Ardrey, Robert. The Primal Scream: The Cure for Neurosis, by Arthur Janov, 1970. ----------------. The Territorial Imperative A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations. New York: Atheneum, 1966. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book III. In The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed., Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. Barthes, Roland. Writing Degree Zero. Trans. Annette Louvers, Colin Smith. London: Jonathan Cape, 1967. Boorstin, Daniel. The Image, Or What Happened to the American Dream. New York: Atheneum, 1962. Bradbrook, Muriel C. English Dramatic Form. London: Chatto and Windus, 1965. Bunge, Mario. Causality: The Place of the Causal Principle in Modern Science. Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1963. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria, London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Everyman’s Library No. 11, 1921. Deutsch, Karl W. The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control. London: The Free Press of Glencoe / Collier Macmillan Limited, 1963. Donne, John. “An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary.” In Representative Poetry, Vol. I. Third Edition, Rev. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962. Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig. Asclepius. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1945. Eliot, T. S. “Four Quartets.” In Collected Poems 1909 – 1962. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1963. ----------------. “Matthew Arnold.” In The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England. London: Faber and Faber, 1946. ----------------. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In Collected Poems 1909 – 1962. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1963. Elyot, Sir Thomas. The Governour. London: J. M. Dent and Co., Everyman’s Library, No. 227, 1937. Empson, William. “Legal Fiction.” In Collected Poems. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1949. Explorations in Media Ecology. The Journal of the Media Ecology Association. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, Inc. Now published by Bristol, England: Intellect Ltd.

271

T H E LO ST T E T RA D S

Frame, Donald M. Montaigne, A Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965. Isaacs, J. The Background of Modern Poetry. New York: Dutton & Co., 1952. Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. London: Faber & Faber, 1939. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Vol. II, No. 2. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970. Laing, R. D. The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise. Penguin Books, 1970. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest. New York: Basic Books, 1963. ----------------. The Raw and the Cooked. Trans. John and Doreen Weightman. Harper and Row, 1966. ----------------. Tristes Tropiques. Trans. John and Doreen Weightman. New York: Atheneum, 1973. Lilley, Sam. Men, Machines and History. Cobbett Press, 1948 Lin, Nan. The Study of Human Communication. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1973. Lowenstein, Otto. The Senses. Penguin Books, 1966. Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” Poems of Andrew Marvell, Sometime Member of Parliament for Hull. London: George Routledge and Sons, Limited. N.d. Also in Representative Poetry, Vol. I. Third Edition, Rev. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962. Mazlish, Bruce. The Railroad and the Space Program. Cambridge, Mass.: M. I. T. Press, 1965. McGraw-Hill. The Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. McLuhan, Eric. Electric Language. Toronto: Stoddart, 1998. McLuhan, Eric und Marshall. “Gesetze der der Medien – strukturelle Annäherung.” Unterrichtswissenschaft. Weinheim & Basel: Beltz, 1974. McLuhan, Marshall and Eric McLuhan. Laws of Media: The New Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. McLuhan, Marshall. "Laws of the Media." In et cetera, Vol. 34, No. 2. San Francisco, CA: International Society for General Semantics, June, 1977, pp. 173-179. ----------------. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934. Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. New York: Popular Library, 1961. Pirandello, Luigi. "To Clothe the Naked." In Naked Masks: Five Plays by Luigi Pirandello. Ed. Eric Bentley. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1932.

272

McLUHAN

Pope, Alexander. "Epistle To Lord Cobham," lines 174-181: Search then the Ruling Passion: there, alone, The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here. This clue once found unravels all the rest, The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confess’d. Wharton! The scorn and wonder of our days, Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise: (See also the “Epistle To Lord Bathurst”, lines 155 ff.) Proust, Marcel. Le temps retrouvé and À la recherche du temps perdu, 1929. Selye, Hans. Stress Without Distress. New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1974. ----------------. The Stress of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956, Rev., 1975. Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus. Hamlet. Solnit, Rebecca. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. New York: Viking Penguin, 2003. Wordsworth, William. “The world is too much with us.” In William Wordsworth: Selected Poems and Prefaces. Ed., Jack Stillinger. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965. Yeats, W. B. “Among School Children.” In Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. London, Melbourne, Toronto: MacMillan and Co., Ltd. Second Edition, 1950 … 1967.

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A b o u t t h e A u t h o rs Marshall

M c L u h a n (1911-1980) was an internationallyrenowned media theorist and perhaps the first genuinely “modern” philosopher of communications. In the 1950s, he introduced the concept of the “global village,” a vast global “technological mind” that today would be called the Internet. Besides co-writing Laws of Media in 1988 and working closely for many years with his father, D r . E r i c M c L u h a n has been deeply involved in exploring media ecology and communications. He is the author of more than a dozen books on media, perception, and literature.

Photograph of Marshall McLuhan © 2017 Michael McLuhan