Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. - Marshall McLuhan

A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.

I heard what you were saying. You - you know nothing of my work. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

Physiologically there are abundant reasons for an extension of ourselves involving us in a state of numbness. Medical researchers like Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas hold that all extensions of ourselves, in sickness or in health, are attempts to maintain equilibrium. Any extension of ourselves they regard as “autoamputation,” and they find that the autoamputative power or strategy is resorted to by the body when the perceptual power cannot locate or avoid the cause of irritation. Our language has many expressions that indicate this self-amputation that is imposed by various pressures. We speak of “wanting to jump out of my skin” or of “going out of my mind,” being “driven batty” or “flipping my lid.” And we often create artificial situations that rival the irritations and stresses of real life under controlled conditions of sport and play.