tumbling grex

McLuhan on air travel (via Evgeny Morozov) October 18, 1966 Dear Howard:

Eric and I got to process your Destination Syndrome a bit last night. One key to that Syndrome is hope.

Unlike the car and train passenger, the air traveller is a prisoner of hope. He has much need for visual security. Like the movie, the plane is a sort of magic carpet that excerpts us from the ordinary relations of time and space and the plane suspends us parenthetically in a kind of interval.

For the blind the interval is a kind of orientation. For the sighted the interval is auditory. Flight as interval is therefore non-tactile. We are out of touch. We live in hope. Flying time is an interval cut out of visual space and clock-time.