Originally this video was live feedback for rear screen projection behind Terence McKenna in the Seattle nightclub where McKenna gave this, his final talk. At the time no one knew that McKenna was soon to become seriously ill, and that this would be his last public appearence. There was no intention at the time to make this recording available to the public. This edit is made from several cameras and the live video mixing board for the rear screen. This is a new, cleaned-up copy that is clear video footage of Terence McKenna without the additional computer graphics from the 1999 DVD, Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines. This is availabe on DVD by contacting Dr. Jon via HPX.net.
“I’m a full going, full hard-charging McLuhanist. And I really believe that the strengths and weaknesses of the world we’ve inherited, are strengths and weaknesses put there by print- and by the spectrum of effects which McLuhan called the “Gutenberg galaxy”. The spectrum of effects spun off from print- and if you’re not used to thinking in McLuhanist terms, it may not seem immediately obvious to you that phenomenon as different as the modern notion of the democratic citizen, the modern notion of interchangeable parts on an assembly line, the modern notion of comformity to canons of advertising- these are all spectrums of effect created by the linearity and the uniformity of print. It actually, in the late 15th century, reconstructed the medieval psyche into its proto-modern form. And we have lived within that print-constellated cultural hallucination for about 500 years- until the advent of various forms of electronic media in the 20th century.”