Literally, there are no goals at the speed of light, but there are roles. At the speed of light, instead of having a job or an objective, you have to determine for yourself a totally new pattern, a new function in the world. And your new function is that of role-playing, which consists in taking on a whole variety of jobs at once. An ordinary mother with a family has many jobs to perform. So does a farmer. We consider them to be role-players. A farmer doesn't have a job and a mother doesn't have a job. They have roles, very involved and complicated ones. Role-playing is the new electronic form of job-holding; it is replacing job-holding. It does require a kind of reallocation of energies. At the speed of light all the old hardware pattern recognition is useless. If you do not know the new pattern in instant replay, you will be unable to make any use of it.
Man and Media,” lecture delivered at York University, Toronto, (1979), in Understanding Me (2003), p 293 -294
Year: 1979
Chapter:
Speedups
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan