We live in an information environment in which the functions of education are no longer instruction but discovery. When the total environment is made of information, then it is an absurd waste of time to spend all your time in instruction. Discovery is far more rewarding. But the children in our world know this and if you want to have a nice image or just reminder of a very nice image of this big changeover from instruction to discovery think of the ‘Go Go Girls, the discothèques. Here you have an amazing dramatization of human frustration in the great information age: the old repetitive beat, the caged, the environmental job-like cage and the repetitive beat—and all those energies are bottled up in the old culture, the old technology. The Go Go Girl is trying to tell us very loud and clear that the old mechanical technology, behind us, will not serve as a means of controlling or releasing the energies in an electronic age. Every new technology, and this is always true and it is true now.
“What the New Communications Will Mean to Public Relations”, in Public Relations Journal, January, 1967, p 23
Year: 1967
Chapter:
Education
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan