In this very connection I have a new essay, a copy of which I am enclosing, explaining that, why, and how the user is the content of any medium or environment. I am still working on the many features of this situation, and am quite at a loss to explain why I had been unable to see so obvious a fact before. When Trudeau "uses" the media, as in the current nuptial drama [his marriage to Margaret Sinclair, March 5, 1971] , he is their content. When they use him, they are the content. It is sort of reciprocal hi-jacking. Only yesterday I was reading a chapter on "Judgment and Truth in Aquinas" by my friend, Fr. Owens, here at the Medieval Institute.3 He concludes: "They involve the traditional Aristotelian view that the cognitive agent itself becomes and is the thing known. ... Its structure comes from the thing known, and not from any apriori in the intellect."

It turns out then, that my communication theory is Thomistic to the core. It has the further advantage of being able to explain Aquinas and Aristotle in modern terms. We are the content of anything we use, if only because these things are extensions of ourselves. The meaning of the pencil, or the chair I use is the interplay between me and these things. Again, the message of these things is the sum of the changes that result from their social use. Thus, 1 have added two features to "the medium is the message", namely the content and the meaning. Perhaps Pierre Juneau or somebody at C.R.T.C. would like to have this essay apropos the problem of "Canadian content"? The consequence for the discussion of the problem of Canadian content for the media is drastically simplified by noticing that the user is the content. If Canadians use or watch American programs or drive American cars, it is the Canadians who are the content of these things. The meaning is in the resulting interplay or dialogue between Canadians and these things, but there can be no question that the Canadian user of American things is the content of these things. The meaning and the message are something else. It is unfortunate that the C.R.T.C. ever involved itself in the question of content, especially since it does not understand the nature of media at all, except as hardware.

…Since the user as content is not a figure of speech but a basic dynamic and cognitative relationship, I think you will find that it can be pushed all the way as a means of orientation in media, economics and politics. I suggest that it can be the basis for a complete restatement of political and economic realities in the information age of the wired planet.