It’s a libertarian notion of human progress — progress as defined not by social connections, but by the rejection of them. The lone geniuses. The round pegs. The stubborn individualists. “A system can only produce a system,” Jobs remarks. “I don’t want to be part of that.”
Globe & Mail: McLuhan at 100
McLuhan and fellow U of T scholar Harold Innis were at one time alone among students of human society in making the history of mass media central to the history of civilization. Today it’s a given.
.. He saw three great changes in human history related to communications technology, each one having an exponentially greater effect on humanity, each one externalizing, or “outing,” one or more of the senses.
.. My suggestion for students is to begin with the articles written by McLuhan – ‘Acoustic Space’ and ‘The Effect of the Printed Book on the language of the 16th century’ and a couple others that appear in the anthology entitled Explorations in Communication. These articles are lucid, comprehensible introductions to McLuhan’s thought.”
The Power of Art – Picasso (complete episode)
What makes Picasso’s Guernica a masterpiece and Modern Art’s most powerful anti-war statement of the 20th Century?
Tallis Scholars – Allegri – Miserere
According to the popular story (backed up by family letters), the fourteen-year-old Mozart was visiting Rome, when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. Later that day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Chapel that Friday to make minor corrections. Some time during his travels, he met the British historian Dr Charles Burney, who obtained the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. Once the piece was published, the ban was lifted; Mozart was summoned to Rome by the Pope, only instead of excommunicating the boy, the Pope showered praises on him for his feat of musical genius. (Wikipedia)