It has become one of the main occupations of mankind: just watching other people and keeping a record of their goings-on. This is the way most businesses are run. Every business has a huge espionage sector. And this is called public relations, and it's called audience research. And this is around the clock. And this has become the main business of mankind: just watching the other guy.

If Big Brother is watching, it is because we insist that he do so.

t electric speed, everything becomes X-ray. Watergate is a nice parable or example of how secrecy was flipped into show business. 

The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions��� the patterns of mechanistic technologies—are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank—that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early "mistakes."

A planet parenthesized by a man-made environment no longer offers any directions orf gorls to nation or individual. The world itself has become a probe. “Snooping with intent to creep” or “casing everybody else’s joint” has become a major activity. As the main business of the world becomes espionage, secrecy becomes the basis of wealth, as with magic in a tribal society.

Espionage is now the total human activity -- whether you call it audience rating, consumer surveys and so on. All men are now engaged as hunters of espionage.

What is the effect on a person who speaks into a phone that is bugged or tapped? Simply this, such a person speaks as if to a highly specialized audience. He “puts on” his audience. He wears a corporate mask like any other speaker. Private discourse ends. In the long run, the effect of bugging phones, like the effect of computer data banks, is to obliterate all private individuality.

We all become show biz under the kind of news coverage we have, everybody expects coverage, everybody expects to be transformed into show biz to some degree.

Thus wire-tapping seems even more odious than the reading of other people's letters.

“Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community’s need to know.”

People panic when invited to alter habitual ways of seeing, and looking, and hearing, and feeling. They are quite right in supposing that an effort is being made to alter their identity. The teacher is satisfied with nothing less than that.

Another strange effect of this electric environment is the total absence of secrecy. What
President Nixon refers to as the confidentiality of his role and position is no longer feasible. No form of secrecy is possible at electric speed, whether in the patent world, in the fashion world or in the political world. The pattern becomes obvious before anybody
says anything about it. At electric speed, everything becomes X-ray. Watergate is a nice parable or example of how secrecy was flipped into show business.

The new human occupation of the electronic age has become surveillance, CIA-style. Espionage is now the total human activity – whether you call it audience rating, consumer surveys, and so on. All men are now engaged as hunters of espionage. So women are completely free to take over the dominant role in our society. Women’s liberation represents demand for absolute mobility, not just physical and political freedom to change roles, jobs, and attitudes, but total mobility.

The police state is now a work of art, a bureaucratic ballet of undulated sirens. That is a way of saying that the espionage activities of our multitudinous man hunters and “crediting” agencies are not only archaic, but redundant and irrelevant.

…with wire tapping you are broadcasting… This is another feature of our time; as technology improves, privacy disappears.

The entire planet has become a whispering gallery, with a large portion of mankind engaged in making its living by keeping the rest of mankind under surveillance.

What has happened since the old muckraking days of the 1920s is that espionage, whether political or commercial, has become the largest business in the world, and we take it for granted that the modern newspaper depends on "bugging" the whole community. In fact, we expect the press to “bug” the world and to challenge and penetrate all privacy and identity, whether private or corporate.

MIKE MCMANUS: The investigations now of the CIA, the FBI, and even our own, God forbid, RCMP, has this anything to do with the electronic age?
MARSHALL MCLUHAN: Well, yes, because we now have the means to keep everyone under surveillance. No matter what part of the world they’re in, we can put them under surveillance. It has become one of the main occupations of mankind, just watching other people and keeping a record of their goings-on. This is the way most businesses are run. Every business has a huge espionage sector. This is called public relations and audience research, and this is around the clock. This has become the main business of mankind, just watching the other guy.