miniZibaldone

“That Hitler came into political existence at all is directly owing to radio and public-address systems. This is not to say that these media relayed his thoughts effectively to the German people. His thoughts were of very little consequence. Radio provided the first massive experience of electronic implosion, that reversal of the entire direction and meaning of literate Western civilization. For tribal peoples, for those whose entire social existence is an extension of family life, radio will continue to be a violent experience. Highly literate societies, that have long subordinated family life to individualist stress in business and politics, have managed to absorb and to neutralize the radio implosion without revolution. Not so those communities that have had only brief or superficial experience of literacy. For them, radio is utterly explosive. [. . .] With TV came the end of bloc voting in politics, a form of specialism and fragmentation that won’t work since TV. Instead of the vot...

“In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium — that is, of any extension of ourselves — result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. [. . .] The instance of the electric light may prove illuminating in this connection. The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the “content” of any medium is always another medium. [. . .] Let us return to the electric light. Whether the light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of indifference. It could be argued that these activities are in some way the “conten...

The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World by Caitlin Smith Gilson Human Cloning and Human Dignity by Leon Kass   The Recalictrant Art: Diotima's Letters to Holderlin and Related Missives by David Farrel Krell   Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi  A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume   Poetics by Aristotle McLuhan: Pro and Con by Raymond Rosenthal Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan Robert Musil and the NonModern by Mark Freed     The Meaning of Love by Vladimir Solovyov

The Meaning of the Creative Act by Nicolas Berdyaev   The Missionary and the Libertine by Ian Buruma   A Short History of English Literature by Sir Evans   Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan   Loving Jesus by Mother Teresa   Holidays in Hell by P. J. O'Rourke   An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin by N. M. Wildiers   The Descent of the Dove by Charles Williams

Miracles by C. S. Lewis   Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge   Poems and Critics by Christopher Ricks   McLuhan: Pro and Con by Raymond Rosenthal   Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau   Against Happiness by Eric Wilson