Three Useful Quotations from MM:
We no longer live in a visual world. Quantum mechanics began to call it the world of “resonance” in 1927. Physicists, then and since, do not understand either the peculiar properties of visual space, or tactile space, or kinetic, proprioceptive, or cosmic space. All of these spaces enter into the most ordinary compositions that we still call “pictorial”. Our studies here have taught us that the TV child has lost the habit of visual convergence and has become monocular, or Cyclopean in his adjustment to the outer world. Cyclopean vision is that of the hunter. The hunter has no point of view, no goals, no perspective. These changes are the result of electric technologies and are causing the collapse of all existing bureaucracies with their visually programmed structures. – Marshall McLuhan, LETTERS OF MARSHALL McLUHAN, 1987, p.388
IN A PRE-LITERATE WORLD WORDS ARE NOT SIGNS. They evoke things directly in what psychologists call acoustic space. By being named, the thing is simply there. Acoustic space is a dynamic or harmonic field. It exists while the music or sound persists. And the hearer is one with it, as with music. Acoustic space is the space-world of primeval man. Even his visual experience is much subordinate to his auditory and magical domain wherein there is neither centre nor margin nor point of view. – Marshall McLuhan, COUNTERBLAST, 1969, p.79
Formerly, the problem was to invent new forms of labor-saving. Today, the reverse is the problem. Now we have to adjust, not to invent. We have to find the environments in which it will be possible to live with our new inventions. – Marshall McLuhan, THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE, 1967, p.124
