Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06482_Field_TCUM T47.txt

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

     “The rise of the waltz,” explained Curt Sachs in the World
History of the Dance , “was a result of that longing for truth,
simplicity, closeness to nature, and primitivism, which the last
two-thirds of the eighteenth century fulfilled.” In the century of
jazz we are likely to overlook the emergence of the waltz as a
hot and explosive human expression that broke through the
formal feudal barriers of courtly and choral dance styles.

     There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium
like radio from a cool one like the telephone,  or a hot medium
like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that
extends one single sense in “high definition.” High definition is
the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is,
visually, “high definition.” A cartoon is “low definition,” simply
because very little visual information is provided. Telephone is a
cool medium, or one of low definition, because the ear is given a