Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06464_Field_TCUM T29.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 933b | 16 lines

damned fat book, eh, Mr. Gibbon? Scribble, scribble, scribble,
eh, Mr. Gibbon?” De Tocqueville was a highly literate aristocrat
who was quite able to be detached from the values and
assumptions of typography. That is why he alone understood
the grammar of typography. And it is only on those terms,
standing aside from any structure or medium, that its
principles and lines of force can be discerned. For any medium
has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary.
Prediction and control consist in avoiding this subliminal state
of Narcissus trance. But the greatest aid to this end is simply in
knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as
in the first bars of a melody.

     A Passage to India  by E. M. Forster is a dramatic study of
the inability of oral and intuitive oriental culture to meet with
the rational, visual European patterns of experience. “Rational,”