Oh I had a 1-1 presentation with the professor for a philosophy class and he wanted us to present one point from one author, capture the point in five minutes or less, and survive ten minutes of cross examination. This guy was a real shark too, not only was he known to be very sharp and super cutting with his critiques, he was the kind of guy who would force a class of forty people to sit a presentation in his office for twenty minutes each so he could avoid correcting term papers.

I chose Marshall McLuhan and spoke for maybe three minutes and why his assertion that “the medium is the message” is true because the invention of email made it unacceptable for a company with a branch in Toronto and one in Montreal to communicate by horseback, so the expected pace of business was irrevocably changed. Email is only “amazing” for a couple of days, then it’s a fact that dictates expectations, and so, what you communicate by email is of much less consequence in the long run than the deep change in corporate culture that email causes. That was the core of McLuhan’s point.

Got an A+ for that one, and was out of his office and on my way in less than ten minutes.

Marshall McLuhan’s was the only work I read of all the assignments in that entire class.