With our accelerating cascade of new media it is borne upon us that each represents not an appendix to but a complete retranslation of the Book of the World, and of the reader. As W.B. Yeats sang, in 'Sailing to Byzantium': Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling...Vico simply had not distinguished between first and second nature for separate study: nothing in his experience suggested such a distinction would be of any use. Second nature is nature made and remade by man as man remakes himself with his extensions. Separate them: the first is the province of traditional grammar; the second, that of Bacon, Vico, and Laws of Media.
Eric and Marshall McLuhan
Laws of Media
