[BC] Re: HD Receiver returns

[Stan Tacker]

> What was it that Marshall McLuhan said?  The medium is the message?  What
> signal are we sending today?

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This should probably go to AF but for what it's worth:

The book's title is actually a mistake according to McLuhans' son, Eric. The

actual title was "The Medium is the Message" but it came back from the 
printer with the first "e" in message misprinted as an "a". McLuhan is said 
to have thought the mistake to be supportive of the point he was trying to 
make in the book and decided to leave it alone. Later readings have 
interpreted the word in the title as a pun meaning alternately "massage", 
"message", and "mass age". Its message, broadly speaking, is that historical

changes in communications and craft media change human consciousness, and 
that modern electronics are bringing humanity full circle to an industrial 
analogue of tribal mentality, what he termed "the global village". By 
erasing borders and dissolving information boundaries, electronic 
telecommunications are fated to render traditional social structures like 
the Nation state and the University irrelevant. Prejudice and oppression are

also doomed by the unstoppable pressure of instant, global communication. On

this last point McLuhan may have been overly optimistic.

I read the book and I always thought the reference to the "massage" was a
joke.  So much for my reading skills.

Tomorrow class, we will begin reading the "Greening of America."  

Ahh, good stuff.