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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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06444_Field_TCUM T9.txt
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1996-04-10
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In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and
dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit
of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical
fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the
personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of
any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is
introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by
any new technology. Thus, with automation, for example, the
new patterns of human association tend to eliminate jobs, it is
true. That is the negative result. Positively, automation creates
roles for people, which is to say depth of involvement in their
work and human association that our preceding mechanical
technology had destroyed. Many people would be disposed to
say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the
machine, that was its meaning or message. In terms of the
ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another