Books: Blowing Hot & Cold

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Yet McLuhan is not playing games. He is in humorless earnest. And if the book is taken seriously, it must be judged as fuzzy-minded, lacking in perspective, low in definition and data, redundant, and contemptuous of logical sequence—which is to say that McLuhan has perfectly illustrated the cool qualities he most values in communications. McLuhan's solemn pseudo science at work: "What do we know about the social or psychic energies that develop by electric fusion or implosion when literate individuals are suddenly gripped by an electromagnetic field, such as occurs in the new Common Market pressure in Europe?" Or: "Had TV occurred on a large scale during Hitler's reign, he would have vanished quickly."