“The Age of Writing has passed. We must invent a new metaphor, restructure our thoughts and feelings.”

— Marshall McLuhan

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 14

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Marshall McLuhan 416

Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor … 1911–1980

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“"Is that true," I asked, "that song?"
"It is a metaphor," said Mrs. Davis, "it has metaphorical truth."
"And the end of the mechanical age," I said, "is that a metaphor?"
"The end of the mechanical age," said Mrs. Davis, "is in my judgment an actuality straining to become a metaphor. One must wish it luck, I suppose. One must cheer it on. Intellectual rigor demands that we give these damned metaphors every chance, even if they are inimical to personal well-being and comfort. We have a duty to understand everything, whether we like it or not–a duty I would scant if I could." At that moment the water jumped into the boat and sank us.”

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“A metaphor is a sign of desperation when we need another world to describe what we are feeling. Metaphors are about desperation and safety. We call out to metaphor because a metaphor makes us feel safe.”

Jericho Brown (1976) American writer

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“Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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“Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i
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“The Guide sang: The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought, And fools crying, Because it has begun It will continue as it has begun! The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run Faster for ever, The old age is done, We have new lights and see without the sun.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea, Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?
Pilgrim’s Regress 186–187
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“Our age has need of violence," he writes. And he is violence.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

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“The interpretation of metaphors shifts from the univocality of catachreses to the open possibilities offered by inventive metaphors.”

Umberto Eco book Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

[O] : Introduction, 0.2
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)
Context: The principle of interpretation says that "a sign is something by knowing which we know something more" (Peirce). The Peircean idea of semiosis is the idea of an infinite process of interpretation. It seems that the symbolic mode is the paramount example of this possibility.
However, interpretation is not reducible to the responses elicited by the textual strategies accorded to the symbolic mode. The interpretation of metaphors shifts from the univocality of catachreses to the open possibilities offered by inventive metaphors. Many texts have undoubtedly many possible senses, but it is still possible to decide which one has to be selected if one approaches the text in the light of a given topic, as well as it is possible to tell of certain texts how many isotopies they display.

“We do not have any production secrets. We invest a lot of effort and money in new research projects. However, before our new invention is used in real life, we usually invent something better. For this reason, we do not have a single patent to protect our inventions.”

Tomáš Baťa (1876–1932) Czech businessman

Attributed to Tomas Bata at tomasbata.com, 2015
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“No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

20 December 1939
My Day (1935–1962)

“The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor—not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies “out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Glow, Big Glowworm", p. 264
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

“The Age of Writing has passed. We must invent a new metaphor, restructure our thoughts and feelings.”

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