To be able to divine in one glance, as Tocqueville was famed to do, how human affairs are changed in scale, pace, and pattern as a consequence of technological innovation – this is said to be what defines social and political navigation. One can even ‘unveil’ the thought (or rather prescribe the direction of its unfolding) before it can speak itself.

Having established that consciousness is not independent of but beholden to technological use, McLuhan asked what are the social and psychic consequences of the amplification and acceleration of existing thought processes that approach instantaneity, or an ‘everything all at once’ state.

His insertion of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida into his own work is a shorthand way to engage the question of the value of the watchful state under conditions of instantaneity. But to understand this question as one that revolves around the presentation of the daughter of the Trojan priest as indispensable (which I don’t think McLuhan intended as a compliment) is to have sat down and puzzled out Shakespeare’s problem play in advance. The value to be had in Cressida thus calls for a condition of an as-if besetedness, a condition not of immediate value other than in the pleasures of contemplative activity.

What does the arrival of instantaneous knowledge mean for discursive activity? Is it to say any such speech is now passed watching and so valueless, self-obliviating? McLuhan demonstrated in his texts one of the ways that empty speech may be repurposed, solving the problem of low-grade energy fragments that allows them to be reclaimed rather than cast into the void without a clue or care as to their welfare. The passage wrapping up the anonymous stanza on modern thought, for instance, does little else than cue one of the essay’s dominant themes of “total, configurational awareness,” followed by a weak transition launching on to the theme of Hans Selye’s stress theory (3). The weak transition is to be traversed quickly rather than “read,” since in any case it has nothing more to say than what has already been said. It is the bridge function in its most abstract, content-free striving. McLuhan’s word choice laid down soon thereafter confesses to this: “There is simply nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear scrutiny…” (4). Where it re-contextualizes contradictions as primarily structural supports, this is to add currency or value to a surface reading that declines the invitation to bottomless contemplation.

Which is not to say that a commentary doesn’t attend this thread, one directed towards an intended audience that otherwise may be prone to contemplative activity and tranquil reflection, activities that are ill-starred now more than ever in fields shifted to instantaneous environments characterized primarily by empty speech that by design will not hold up to scrutiny.

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