Marshall McLuhan's 1977 school text, written with Kathryn Hutchon and Eric McLuhan, which the series usually cites for its programme — media study conducted as fieldwork, the city itself as the object of investigation, learning without walls. Dialogue 61 uses it differently, as a date: it is the thing McLuhan may or may not have been working on during the mid-1970s, the period Bob is trying to place Bruce Powers in.
Across the dialogues
Gets dated rather than quoted — the book stops being a source of formulations and becomes a marker in the chronology of McLuhan's slow years, with Cameron flatly reclassifying it as assembled rather than written
The book serves as a chronological probe — Bob dates McLuhan's mid-70s output by it, testing whether there was anything for the period to be about.
"So he might have even started working on City as Classroom, but that was slow."
Cameron removes the book from the record of McLuhan's late thinking altogether — compiled from existing material, so its 1977 date says nothing about what he was thinking in 1977.
"And that was nearly all old stuff that was just assembled for the book."
Connections
McLuhan's 1977 school text, written with Kathryn Hutchon and Eric McLuhan, teaching media study by fieldwork rather than exposition.