At the Speed of Light There Is Only Illumination: A Reappraisal of Marshall McLuhan

Alexander Craig is a freelance journalist in Lennoxville, Quebec.

Some of the 13 contributions in this volume offer valuable and unusual
perspectives on Canada’s foremost media sage. For instance, Paul
Tiessen’s portrayal of one of McLuhan’s colleagues, Edmonton-based
Wilfred Watson, shows how he influenced McLuhan. “[T] he
‘information barons,’ Watson thought, “benefited from the myth of
the mass audience. It was they who turned the apparent mass audiences
into an ‘informational serfdom’ by constituting ‘everyman’ as a
mass audience of one.” “The new torture reverses the old technique
of extracting information. It inflicts information upon the victim to
ensure the security of the baronial system under some (usually
imaginary) threat.”

In his introduction, John Moss humbly says: “Bear in mind of course
that everything I have written here may be wrong. If I have misread
these essays it is through ignorance, not intent.” That’s the
challenge for readers of this highly idiosyncratic book. There’s a
great deal of meat as well as media meditation here, so work through At
the Speed of Light There Is Only Illumination very carefully.