One evening after dinner I was telling my friends that I was now concerned with improving the world. One of them said: I thought you always were. I then explained that I believe - and am acting upon - Marshall McLuhan's statement that we have through electronic technology produced an extension of our brains to the world formerly outside of us. To me that seems the disciplines, gradual and sudden (principally Oriental), formerly practised by individuals to pacify their minds, bringing them into accord with ultimate reality. now must be practised socially - that is, not just inside our heads, but outside of them, in the world, where our central nervous system effectively now is.

- John Cage