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This recording is of Eric McLuhan's contribution (and a few questions/answers/comments following) to a panel at the MEA annual conference in June 2017. The panel's title refers to a book which had at the time recently been published, somewhat of a reaction to Eric McLuhan's book 'Media and Formal Cause' [Eric and Marshall McLuhan, NeoPoiesis Press, 2011]. Eric's book itself was a reaction to a discussion among people on the MEA mailing list which, according to Eric, forced him to delve deep into the subject to put the matter at rest - at least for and to his own satisfaction. A few years later, presumably for their own satisfaction, several members of the MEA, (including Anton, Logan, and Strate, editors of the books and members of this panel heard at the end) published 'Taking up McLuhan's Cause: Perspectives on Media and Formal Causality', to which Eric McLuhan wrote an introduction. It is a bit of a full-circle moment, as Eric was annoyed into researching and writing M/FC by the MEA, then wrote an intro to their published response, then closed the panel resulting from the book at the MEA meeting in 2017 - setting the record (as he saw it) straight while giving insight into the history of Formal Cause (as we know it), it's use to Marshall McLuhan and himself, and more.

Recorded June 24th 2017, at the 18th annual conference of the Media Ecology Association, held at St. Mary's College at Moraga, California.

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The McLuhan Institute exists to explore and understand the personal and social effects and implications of technology, following the pioneering work of Marshall McLuhan.

Eric McLuhan on Formal Cause (June 24th 2017)