It's a pretty easy concept to grasp, the world is getting smaller. In McLuhan's lifetime it was things like satellite news, long distance telephone calls, and international mass-marketing of consumer items, like the Beatles. Now we have auto-translate, zoom, and instagram, the app which is making everyone visually literate. McLuhan's musings on his 'global village' were rather dark, rooted in the cold war, which wasn't really over until after McLuhan's death. The last section of the book opens with a picture of Marilyn Monroe attending the 1959 visit of USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev to the US.
This visit coincided with a period of aggressive build-up of nuclear weapons by both countries. Next comes...
"The (media) environment as a processor of information is propaganda"
A line that's definitely worth pondering.
"Propaganda ends where dialog begins."
Now with interactive media, do we really have any true dialog? Is instagram all the commercials with none of the programs? And with only the most smug, cliche comments?
Next;
"Quảng Đức's self-immolation came in response to the persecution of Buddhists by the government under Diệm." Students from Vietnam always have much to say about how misleading the narration here is. Then...
Interestingly interpreted by McLuhan, a devout Catholic. Then, symmetry with the beginning. "You" becomes "...and who are you?" ...it all depends on who you're with.
How do you end this?...with a New Yorker cartoon that propagandizes McLuhan!
