A capacity Cameron McEwen identifies as central to McLuhan — the ability to see what others cannot, including into the future, while the who, when, and where remain unknown to the seer. Cameron's claim has a reflexive edge: understanding McLuhan requires exercising a little second sight oneself.
Across the dialogues
Names McLuhan's capacity to see what others can't — and asks the reader to use it too
Cameron's name for McLuhan's lifelong capacity to see what others couldn't — second sight.
"McLuhan could see things that other people couldn't see. And this was a trait that he had his whole life long. I like to think of it as second sight."
His key example — in 1970 ("A Garbage Apocalypse") McLuhan described language disappearing; after his 1979 stroke he could speak only a few phrases. He didn't know he was describing himself.
"Have you not noticed that language is disappearing very rapidly?"
The capacity is reflexive — reading McLuhan well requires the reader to exercise second sight too.
"In order really to understand McLuhan, you need to exercise a little bit of second sight yourself."
There is a necessary opacity between where the reader is and where they need to be — and a further gap in what they'll see even if they succeed.
"There's a necessary opacity there, both between what I'm doing now and what I will be doing in five minutes."
Bob's example (McLuhan to Father Peyton, 1971) — second sight as not knowing what you saw.
"I don't know what the difference is between medium and message."
Bob's story — in a 1974 interview McLuhan told June Callwood off-record that he had ESP; she cut it from her article.
"I have a friend who's in New Guinea, and I know exactly what they're thinking."
Verified by hindsight — McLuhan's "auto-projection mechanism" that saw seventy years ahead, provable now that "we're 70 years out," his fruits "accurate"
Second sight given a proof by hindsight — McLuhan saw "in the 1950s what would happen to security agencies, politics, entertainment," and we can now verify he "was thinking 70 years ahead" precisely because we stand seventy years out; "you can know somebody by their fruits, and his fruits were accurate."
"and we're able to see that he was able to think 70 years ahead because we're 70 years out."
Raised to "the first scientific prophet" — prophecy not by occult means but by reading the present, McLuhan’s second sight recast as what anticipated the Tech Body
Attached to speed — McLuhan’s "faster mind" reframed not as kinetic quickness but as "second sight," an ESP that stayed ahead of Mailer "on his gaps"
Second sight attached to speed — McLuhan’s "faster mind" is reframed as ESP rather than kinetic quickness, the cool perception that stayed "ahead of Mailer on his gaps."
"It's ESP almost. Your second sight."
Connections
Cameron's name for McLuhan's lifelong capacity to see what others couldn't — including into the future.
In acoustic / future space the who, when, and where of what's seen apply “as blanks, as gaps, as unknowns.”
McLuhan not knowing the difference between medium and message is, for Bob, a prime case of second sight — seeing without knowing what one sees.
The suppressed Callwood remarks are a case of second sight — McLuhan reporting a knowing he could not publicly account for.