Marshall McLuhan's co-author on The Global Village (1989), the posthumous book drawn from mid-1970s work, and a teacher at Niagara University. He recurs in the series mostly as a citation attached to that book's angel/robot distinction; dialogue 61 is the one session that treats him as a person, and Bob's interest there is not literary but circumstantial — where Powers stood in McLuhan's final years. Not to be confused with the Canadian writer B.W. Powe, who appears separately in dialogues 39 and 55.
Across the dialogues
Moves from a name on a title page to a person in the room — a regular presence in McLuhan's last working years whom the series had never registered
Powers belongs to the undocumented late circle — invisible to the people who thought they knew who was around McLuhan, and therefore evidence of how much of the mid-70s remains unreconstructed.
"I never heard anything about Bruce Powers when McLuhan was alive. But it turns out Bruce Powers was visiting McLuhan."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 61 (1 Dec 2022), 7:49
Connections
Co-author of The Global Village (1989), the posthumous book assembled from mid-1970s material; taught at Niagara University.