Today, a new moon is in the sky, a 23-inch metal sphere placed
in orbit by a Russian rocket.
Here, an artist's conception of how the feat was accomplished.
A three-stage rocket, number one, the booster in the class of an intercontinental
missile, its weight estimated at 50 tons.
The smaller second stage took over at 5,000 miles an hour and carried on to the
highest point reached. 500 miles up, the artificial moon is boosted to a speed
counterbalancing the pull of gravity and released.
You are hearing the actual signals transmitted by the Earth-circling satellite,
one of the great scientific feats of the age.
[...]
We live in interesting, exciting and anxious time.
There is more than the rumor of war.
Will this be humanity tomorrow?
And the year after. 2036 AD, you are cut off from
the 2nd century, swirled into the great unknown, into an era of plasticities
towering to the south, and the gigantic space-dawn
rocketing passengers to the moon.
The 20th century is the age of electric technology.
It's the most dominant tool of our time.
And re-evaluate every thought and every institution you
formally took for granted.
You are hearing the actual signals transmitted by the Earth-circling satellite,
one of the great scientific feats of the age.
The electric age is changing you.
It is changing your family.
It is changing your neighborhood.
It is changing your education.
It is changing your job.
It is changing your government.
It is changing your relationship to others.
These little circuits are making our world go.
The electric age is having a profound effect on us.
We are in a period of fantastic change that's coming about at fantastic speed.
Your life is changing dramatically, and you are numb to it.
And you are numb to it.
Well, the title medium is the massage, is a teaser, a way of getting attention.
There's a wonderful sign hanging on a Toronto junkyard which reads, help
beautify junkyards.
Throw something lovely away today.
And this is a very effective way of getting people to notice.
A lot of things.
And so the title is intended to draw attention to the fact that a medium
is not something neutral.
It does something to people. It takes hold of them.
It wraps them up. It massages them. It bumps them around.
And as it were, chiropractically.
And the general roughing up that any society gets from a medium, especially a new
medium, is what is intended to be indicated in that title.