Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06476_Field_TCUM T41.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 872b | 16 lines

clues to the magic of these media or to their subliminal charge.

     Leonard Doob, in his report Communication in Africa , tells
of one African who took great pains to listen each evening to
the BBC news, even though he could understand nothing of it.
Just to be in the presence of those sounds at 7 P.M. each day
was important for him. His attitude to speech was like ours to
melody—the resonant intonation was meaning enough. In the
seventeenth century our ancestors still shared this native’s
attitude to the forms of media, as is plain in the following
sentiment of the Frenchman Bernard Lam expressed in The Art
of Speaking  (London, 1696):

     ’Tis an effect of the Wisdom of God, who created Man to be
     happy, that whatever is useful to his conversation (way of
     life) is agreeable to him . . . because all victual that