Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06455_Field_TCUM T20.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

     Such economists as Robert Theobald, W. W. Rostow, and
John Kenneth Galbraith have been explaining for years how it is
that “classical economics” cannot explain change or growth.
And the paradox of mechanization is that although it is itself
the cause of maximal growth and change, the principle of
mechanization excludes the very possibility of growth or the
understanding of change. For mechanization is achieved by
fragmentation of any process and by putting the fragmented
parts in a series. Yet, as David Hume showed in the eighteenth
century, there is no principle of causality in a mere sequence.
That one thing follows another accounts for nothing. Nothing
follows from following, except change. So the greatest of all
reversals occurred with electricity, that ended sequence by
making things instant. With instant speed the causes of things
began to emerge to awareness again, as they had not done
with things in sequence and in concatenation accordingly.