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any lengths to avoid mentioning any emotions or the first intimation that computer visual display Fontana Modern Masters series for an all-out
to generate any form of involvement or techniques can be a source of enjoyment and attack on Marshall McLuhan's reputation, but
enthusiasm and will even claim to have replaced create things of beauty. Instead of the sterile an attack which implicitly pays a real tribute to
intuition by digital processes. It reminds us that solemnity which characterises quaint, one-a- McLuhan. The tribute is that he has awakened
the heroic phase of modern art is well and truly minute, throwaway doodles as 'impermanent perception and convened a debate.
over: no more lunatics burning their passions works of art' we have a host of privileged People have been sniping at McLuhan for
out on canvas; just a group of men in white coats American schoolkids playing with visual display some time. His recent publishing follies made it
deciding what next week's New Movement is units —creating for the hell of it. reasonable to think merely that his infatuation
going to be (and of course how much it will cost). Towards the end the book slowly succumbs to with advertising and PR had blunted the valuable
Although the heroic phase has been neutered, the more joyful aspects of an otherwise bleak insights expressed in The Mechanical Bride and
the process has thrown out, as a by-product, a scene. Given another hundred pages it could The Gutenberg Galaxy. Miller's complaint is
non-heroic non-sterile equivalent to its have developed into a powerful stimulant. As it more radical: that McLuhan's fundamental
creativity. The hardware is as yet primitive is, it constitutes a useful outline of what's been arguments, which are most weightily set out in
(cathode ray tubes and plotters) but the software done and how it was done. The sections on two the Galaxy (1962), are wrong. McLuhan has so
enabling us to manipulate it is sufficiently of Charles Csuri's procedures and on the ARTI immunized himself against criticism that only a
advanced to open out fantastic possibilities for educational programme are particularly useful frontal attack, mobilizing a wide range of
everybody to develop their visual awareness. in that they are explained in such detail that one weapons, could have drawn any blood. (It
Spirographs and pantographs pale before this cannot help but want to apply the processes should be added that Miller carries out the
new toy. In one of the few assertive alive oneself. q exercise without personal animosity.)
passages in the book, Stan Vanderbeek is quoted COLIN MOORCRAFT Miller's strategy is of some interest, and may
as saying that the computer is 'a large black box: owe something to the Chomskyan notion of
the memory of the world, a metaphysical Grist to the Miller `deep structure', for he seems to try and abstract
printing press', and as predicting 'I expect driving from the available published data a structure of
a computer down the road of art and sensibilities, McLuhan by Jonathan Miller. 140 pp. attitudes and ideas which might be conceived of
will lead to flying: i.e. analogue systems... and Fontana. Sop. as 'generating' (in the linguistic sense) all and
that will be very lovely and full of surprises that only the statements which we recognize as
defy gravity and expected images ... my own Slim but condensed, a work of 'conceptual art' McLuhanese. Others have rebutted McLuhan
perspective as an artist and my instincts, tell me if ever there were one, this is an important book at the level of his specific theories and
that memory is the matrix of the human which should be read by all who are interested in interpretations on every topic under the sun.
condition, and computers are the pertinent theories of media and communication and by all Lawrence Alloway, for instance, writing in the
extension of the real-time mind of man... who are in the habit of quoting McLuhan July 1969 issue of Studio International, attacks his
hooray for art and life...'. This passage occurs aphorisms to back up their own arguments. position on popular media. However, McLuhan
eight ninths of the way through the book and is Jonathan Miller has used the format of the is quite happy to scrap any statement that no

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