on the medium is the message/massage and
Alice gets a thimble in Wonderland
- Alice text = Page 26 from: Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, Illustrated by John Tenniel, Illustrated Junior Library. Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1983.
- McLuhan text = Page 26 from: Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, produced by Jerome Agel. Berkeley: Gingko Press, 1967/1996
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Media (especially when sweeping) inflects us from the outside, changing us forever. This can make us want objects and can lead us to treat ourselves and other people as objects. Consumption as Loss: ‘More is Less’ as we stand eclipsed under a torrent of (not) our own intentions.
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Gifts (especially when small) inflect us from the outside, changing us forever. This can open us to our neighbor as an end not a means, and by this way (and this way alone) open us to ourselves. (The thimble story is one of my favorites, crystallizing through a glass darkly the habitual structures but also the hidden mysteries of society, friendship, and response).