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the karmafia

McLuhan: "You see, the war is on. The war doesn't have to be fought with guns anymore. The war is on and the country has dropped out. But so have a lot of other people dropped out, in other parts of the world too. There are several wars raging at the same time. Every group has its own mafia, and sure the kids are having their wars. French Canada dropped out but no more than in the sense that English Canada has also dropped out of Confederation." (Interview with Marshal McLuhan in the 1973 Hydro-Quebec magazine Forces, p. 70)

The image of the "dropout" was a favorite of McLuhan's. If you were anyone significant you were dropping out of something (contained or packaged: school or the corporation or Confederation), and tuning into or turning onto the "global electric theatre." Why drop out? To tune in, of course, in order to hone one's non-specialized perception and join or make a "mafia" - McLuhan was big on families! Mafias emerge unexpectedly from hierachized, rigid structures and shape culture by controlling information; clearly, hackers and phreaks and those into the computer virus scene are McLuhanesque mafiosi, as are independent filmmakers (McLuhan and Nevitt 1972). Mafiosi innovate in the ongoing war - fought with "flames" or subpoenas in the case of pirates and cybercops - understood in terms of the displacements effected by new technologies.

-Gary Genoskso, from McLuhan and Baudrillard: The Masters of Implosion (1996), Rutledge, London and New York, p. 101