In America, they tend to have these great big screens for the game itself, so that you can watch the game on television while the game is in process. This is a kind of situation that I think invites an enormous awareness of actual process, to participate in the kind of replay of the thing, while it is still ongoing. Participation in replay is a form of pattern recognition that is new in the media and has, I'd say, rather large consequences, mostly cognitive, mostly consequences that will affect our nature of our cognition and awareness and I would think entirely only in the direction of extreme self-awareness. I once asked a famous quarterback, in American football, on television, once asked him what the effect of the instant replay had been on the game of football and he said “We have now to play the game, in such a way, that the audience can watch the actual process that were performing”.
Speech on Video: The Medium Is The Message – 1977 (Part 2 Of 3), Youtube, Transcript: 06.53
Year: 1977
Chapters:
America, North America | Pattern Recognition
↪ Also at #232
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan