Essential McLuhan 286 with the computer and has been anticipated in our obsession with ESP and occult awareness. —1972 It may be worth mentioning the structural features of analogy since with the computer there has risen the possibility of extending consciousness itself as a technological environment. If this is to be done, it cannot be done on the basis of any existing notion of rationality.—1971 Having extended or translated our central nervous system into the electromagnetic technology, it is but a further stage to transfer our consciousness to the computer world as well.—1964 An external consensus or conscience is now as necessary as private consciousness.—1964 [A future medium like a kind of computerized ESP would process] consciousness as the corporate content of the environment—and eventually maybe even [lead to] a small portable computer, about the size of a hearing aid, that would process of private experience through the corporate experience, the way dreams do now. —1965 The technological tendency to do more and more with less and less could now be exceeded only by putting the information directly into the human nervous system. If an age of “brain transplants” lies ahead, it may become possible to supply each new generation with “brain prints” taken live and directly from the intellects of the age. Instead of buying the works of Shakespeare or Erasmus, one might well become electroencephalographically imprinted with the actual brain perception and erudition of Shakespeare or Erasmus. The book… could then be bypassed.—1970