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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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06447_Field_TCUM T12.txt
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1996-04-10
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16 lines
The airplane, on the other hand, by accelerating the rate of
transportation, tends to dissolve the railway form of city,
politics, and association, quite independently of what the
airplane is used for.
Let us return to the electric light. Whether the light is
being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of
indifference. It could be argued that these activities are in some
way the “content” of the electric light, since they could not
exist without the electric light. This fact merely underlines the
point that “the medium is the message” because it is the
medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human
association and action. The content or uses of such media are
as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human
association. Indeed, it is only too typical that the “content” of
any medium blinds us to the character of the medium. It is only