Any Environment Is Invisible When It Wants To Know You

The Canadian professor and media philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) explained that any environment tends to be invisible. A media environment is so pervasive that we don’t see it. He devised many methods of sensing and making sense out of our media environment, one of which was a series of four questions that he called the “tetrad.” We can apply them to the digital world, which is a kind of conducting medium for thought, images and ideas:

* What does the medium enhance?
* What does the medium make obsolete?
* What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
* What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?

We could add, what is the mediums effect on our perception of time and our sense of identity? This, we need to ask as the Aquarius eclipse blows through the neighborhood, whisking us into a new phase of history. Aquarius always directs us to ask how we fit into groups that surround us. Are we more or less able to be ourselves? Are we free to think, feel and be? These are the things to ask yourself.

From astrologer Eric Francis’ excellent column on Mercury Retrograde and the coming eclipse, over on his site, Planetwaves.