Glenn Kubish

I am beginning to see that in the figure-ground divide, I've long had a soft spot for the ground. For the piece of paper and not just the word printed on it. For the road and not just the bicycle or car or bus. The sky, not just the fireworks. The soil and stake, not just the tomato plant. The rink, not just the hockey players. The background and not just the figure. Paul Simon has a line in a song on the Graceland album. In early memory Mission music  Was 'ringing around  My nursery door.  The words depict a literal image in the listener's mind. This is the what of the verse, or the figure. There is also a how . The figure itself is figured. The how that works on me is in the alliteration of m and r sounds, and the way those consonants, repeated, produce a kind of gentle murmur somewhere in the background of my receiving equipment. As a child I struggled with two speech impediments. I couldn't say my r's. And I suffered with a stutter. Speech the...

McLuhan somewhere said something that I remember to be something like:  our electronica has succeeded in externalizing our sensory organs to the point that our central nervous system is now outside of our bodies. I don't know if that is right. I don't know if this is the passage from Understanding Media that I am trying to find:  Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerns. (p. 3)  Part of my point is that I can't find it. I can find the evidence on the left, a note to myself to "get a better grip on the extension of the human organs." But I can't recall the quotation from memory, so I am forced to try to find its tracks, either in the margins of my books or by typing "mccluhan external nervous system" into a Google. That is how I came back to the the quotation above. And that got we wondering what is re...