The 1995 interactive CD-ROM title Understanding McLuhan is a gold-mine of material which has not yet been made accessible on the internet. Among them is this interview of Eric McLuhan on the subjects of the 1990’s McLuhan resurgence, his father’s legacy, and the Laws of Media. Q: What is your perspective on the resurgence of
When Marshall McLuhan mentions Henri Bergson at all, it is in a dismissive tone. The reasons why are simple enough. McLuhan was a Thomist inspired by Jacques Maritain, a fellow convert to Catholicism and student of Bergson at The Sorbonne. Bergson’s philosophy of Creative Evolution(1907 in French)—of a rising spirit of change and time coursing
In a May 1946 letter to Felix Giovanelli, McLuhan points out the poetry in the placement of an experimental atomic reactor pile mentioned in a scientific report. That it should be situated symbolically in a football stadium is too perfect. American sport, the artistic imitation of American business. Our great emotional educator and indicator. You
In his unpublished work The New American Vortex, Marshall McLuhan included in the first book a piece entitled The Case of the Missing Anecdote. The first three pages of its ten-page typescript are crossed out in pencil, and scribbled across the top are instructions to “Skip to the top of page 4.” It’s funny to
