ABSTRACT

Since Sputnik and the satellites, the planet is enclosed in a manmade environment that ends ‘Nature’ and turns the globe into a repertory theater to be programmed. Shakespeare at the Globe mentioning ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’ … has been justified by recent events in ways that would have struck him as entirely paradoxical. The results of living inside a proscenium arch of satellites is that the young now accept the public spaces of the earth as role-playing areas. Sensing this, they adopt costumes and roles and are ready to ‘do their thing’ everywhere. (McLuhan and Watson 1970: 9–10)