Thursday 9 February, 2023
Where?
Quote of the Day
”Four things I’d been better without
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.”
Dorothy Parker
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Jackson Browne & David Lindley | Stay
Long Read of the Day
The Sad Prince
Unexpectedly interesting essay by Derek Neal about trying to escape one’s origins, which means that it’s about Prince Harry, of all people.
I never thought I would write about Prince Harry. As an American, I have a natural aversion to the Royal Family and to the idea that they are somehow different or special by virtue of their birth. They’re just people. But I’m also Canadian by way of my mother, and now that I’ve lived in Canada for a few years, the Canadian interest in the Royals seems to have rubbed off on me, and I can’t help but feel some sort of sympathy for Harry’s plight. He thinks he’s made it to the end of his story—the narrative urge is incredibly strong in the Netflix show (Meghan mentions how they’ve come “full circle”)—yet I can’t help but feel this is just the first chapter, and that the story, which Meghan calls “a fairy tale,” will end up being a bit more sinister, a bit more like a Henry James novel or a Joan Didion essay.
Books, etc.
The End of the McLuhan Centre for Culture & Technology (1968 – 2023)
The purpose of the Centre for Culture and Technology, as initially envisioned by Marshall McLuhan in 1963, was to “advance the understanding of the origins and effects of technology.” One of the specific objectives was “to organize an inter-disciplinary seminar for staff members and graduate students and to devise new experimental procedures for identifying the psychic and social consequences of technological change.” These were revolutionary ideas at the time and there was excitement in the air.
They were (and, in a way, they’ve acquired a new saliency in our current media ecosystem), but it seems that the Faculty of Information in the University of Toronto no longer has much interest in them.
I gave a talk on McLuhan years ago.
Click to download.