Essential McLuhan 180 (b) that such understanding was quite possible; media assumptions do not have to remain subliminal, (c) that the absence of such understanding was eloquent testimony to the power of media to anesthetize those very modes of awareness in which they were most operative. My objectives were: (a) to explain the character of a dozen media, illustrating the dynamic symmetries of their operation on man and society, (b) to do this in a syllabus usable in secondary schools. (Secondary schools were chosen as offering students who had not in their own lives become aware of any vested interest in acquired knowledge. They have very great experience of media, but no habits of observation or critical awareness. Yet they are the best teachers of media to teachers, who are otherwise unreachable.) WRITING 1. What would be the problems of introducing the phonetic alphabet today into Japan and China? 2. Would the consequences of introducing the phonetic alphabet into China today be as drastic as when the Romans introduced the same.alphabet to Gaul? 3. Will the ideogram survive in some new roles in the same way that the printed book finds new work to do in the electronic age? 4. What are some of the advantages of the ideogram over our alphabet? 5. Does a form of writing which involves complex situations at a single glance favor cultural continuity and stability? 6. By contrast, does a form of writing that favors attention to one-thing-at- a-time foster instability and change? 7. In other words, is the man of the ear a conservative, and the man of the eye a liberal? 8. Why should writing weaken the human memory? Pre-literate man, amazed at the efforts of the white man to write down his thoughts and sayings, asks: “Why do you write; can you not remember?” 9. Why should a pre-literate people have no concept of words as referring to things, but only of words as being things? 10. Is the “content” of writing the medium of speech? Is it possible for any medium to have a content except it be another medium? 11. Is the medium the message? 12. Is is possible for a mathematical proposition or demonstration to have content?