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1995
"Perhaps Atwood's refusal to investigate McLuhan's work bespeaks a refusal to examine at all realistically the fabric of Canadian society in situ in 1972; somehow, by ignoring him, and reverting to Frye's positions and impositions of hierarchical patterns on our literature, she managed to avoid our collective and corporate reality altogether." (4)
"As McLuhan: The Musical evolved, video, slides and computer technology became an important element and it became an increasingly difficult element to cost and to incorporate into the show. Early design ideas from Art Penson involved descriptions of the stage as 'an open constructivist manner using scaffolding, steps, platforms, cables, tubes and other necessary items for support, strength and safety. Overhead are suspended rear view projection screens, television monitors, computer monitors and various paraphernalia pertinent to the electronic age as well as any technical equipment to be used during the show.' On the other hand, a scene like 'Campus Capers' highlighting envious university colleagues' responses to McLuhan was described by the designer as 'actors dressed in black suit jackets with oversized plastic glasses (large noses and moustaches) and two-dimensional briefcases'. This scene was easier to budget from a props and costumes point of view."
"There is nevertheless great intelligence here, and Stone has an edge or two on many of her hyped peers in hyperspace. Her references to McLuhan, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari and De Landa are brief but often thoughtful, and it is refreshing to read an account of this zone that deals with socio-economic questions without all the moralistic traps that ensnare so many of her counterparts. Her attention to multiple-personality "disorder" takes her readers into territories that make the virtual spaces of the Internet very real, and not a little scary." (38)
"McLuhan defines media in the subtitle of [ Understanding Media ] - 'The Extensions of Man.' His is a broad definition, including more than the familiar communication media like radio and TV. McLuhan's media include the spoken word, the written word, number, clothing, housing, money, the clock, the motorcar, and other extensions of man. (The book has chapters on 26 different media.) "I think McLuhan would not have seen the Net as one medium, but as juxtaposition of many. The information on the Net is mostly text, but voice, image, animation, video, executable simulations, and other types of information will become common. Multiplicity of media, goes beyond multiple data types. For example, written words on a monitor are different than words on a magazine page, a book page, or a billboard. Furthermore, on the Net, words are used in different contexts. Words on a listserver are different than words in one-one [ sic ] email, or a scholarly paper retrieved from a server. They are like words used in a conference room, a conversation, or an essay, respectively." (16)
"Both Alloway and McLuhan rejected the liberal-humanist academic orthodoxy of the 1950s by implying that mass and avant-garde modernist culture were not and should never be in opposition. On the contrary, both argued that the cultural potential of television, film, and computer technology offered exciting and radical possibilities for artistic intervention. Like McLuhan, Alloway was enthusiastic about a new cultural continuum in which computer technology, Hollywood B movies, popular graphics, Futurism, Cubism, and the latest advances in physics could occupy the same cultural space and cross-fertilize." (167)
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