Was it Bertrand Russell who asked if we were in a bath whose temperature rose half a degree an hour, how would we know when to scream? The pattern recognition that is quite impossible during processes of slow change, becomes quite easy when the same changes are speeded up even to movie or cinematic levels. So, the artist, as a creator of anti-environments or counter-environments, created to permit perception of environments, has a very peculiar role in our society.
“The Invisible Environment: The Future of an Erosion”, Perspecta, Vol.11, (1967), p 165, reprinted in On the Nature of Media, (2016), p 116
Year: 1967
Chapter:
Pattern Recognition
↪ Also at #5303
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan