Understanding Media must become a book by the same means and procedures that necessitate such a book, following the contours of the new reality.¹

In an undated 1959 letter to Harry Skornia, apparently from early February that year, McLuhan described what was both the goal of his Understanding Media project and the only means of working towards that goal and even of communicating about it. Since these were the same, the implicated circularity was exactly the problem that had to be solved: the goal had to be already in effect in order to advance toward the goal.

My suggested approach [to the NAEB project], the one entirely natural to me, is the dialogue form of movement of information between teacher and student [and, indeed, between any interlocutors].  I came across this quote on the dialogue: “The purpose of the dialogue seems to be, first of all, mutual creativeness.  It is not merely the expression of a finished truth, to be exchanged like goods in the market place.  Dialogue is more [an ongoing] shaping² than a communication of ideas.  But this [ongoing] birth of truth is at the same time an encounter of persons (…) awakening truly creative values in us that lead us to the freedom of self-acceptance.”³ You can see that the electronic media above all, since they are shaped by student and teacher alike, call for this kind of dialogue [or] (…) shared quiz approach.⁴