Riposte

F.R. Scott in The Dance is One has a poem answering McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride. It is entitled "The Miniaturized Groom" and is a series of short statements about the adage the medium is the message. Scott quips that McLuhan is a "Master misunderstander!" The poem ends on salvo against technocratic triumphalism.

Message is man
not machine.

In the stanza before this terminal assertion, Scott lists a number of synonyms for what the medium does: mouthpiece, mirror, magnifying-glass, multiplier.

The letter M becomes the medium for delivering the message that "the medium is meant to massage the message / and make it more meaningful."

And so for day 1909
05.03.2012