One of the most striking differences between McLuhan’s diagnosis of the 1970s and his earlier reports is that he registers the end of hidden environments. Having reached something of a threshold, McLuhan apprehended that something of a “flip” or reversal had occurred, pushing all former hidden environments into full visibility:[1]
The patterns of formerly hidden processes now begin to obtrude on every hand. Prescience, prophetic vision, and artistic awareness are no longer needed to establish an understanding of the most secret causes of personal and social processes. Mere electric speed-up makes X-ray awareness natural.[2]
Arguably, one of the contributing factors appears to have been that the rapidly maturing computer-satellite matrix served to consolidate the retrieval of “human scale” that had emerged with the Bomb:
From the moment of Hiroshima and The Bomb we had positive proof that information as such had become the new sinews of war. By complementarity, the same pervasive use of information had created an environment of learning for war, business, and education alike. Paradoxically, the overkill via sheer knowledge returned men to sudden recognition of the precious significance of the human scale. The classic wisdom of nothing in excess was resurrected by this instant of hideous strength when everything was in excess. The human scale that had been submerged during a century of industrial gigantism was instantly and unforgettably retrieved.[3]
As a consequence of formerly hidden environments becoming visible, McLuhan was moved to suggest that Lewis Mumford might “be quite correct in seeing the wedding of the old mechanical hardware and the new electric software as creating a megamachine of the Aztec or Pyramid type.”[4] The complex North American megamachines, e.g. the US$ 53 billion per year advertising industry for the manipulation of the public psyche or the equally vast security systems,[5] McLuhan shows, begin to stand out, stark, and everywhere visible.[6] So too does the mystery of the human heart:
After centuries of confronting the hidden and twisted motives of social men, it came as a mighty deliverance through mechanization to slough off humanity altogether. The alibi for their gesture was absolute equality, albeit in nonentity. As we return to role playing under the impulse of electric circuitry, we also confront once more the mysteries of both malignancy and magnanimity in the human heart.[7]
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