Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06496_Field_TCUM T61.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 892b | 16 lines

recreational changes keep pace. You must change the whole
pattern at once and the whole group together—and the people
themselves must decide to move.”

     Margaret Mead  is thinking here of change as uniform
speed-up of motion or a uniform hotting-up of temperatures in
backward societies. We are certainly coming within conceivable
range of a world automatically controlled to the point where we
could say, “Six hours less radio in Indonesia next week or there
will be a great falling off in literary attention.” Or, “We can
program twenty more hours of TV in South Africa next week to
cool down the tribal temperature raised by radio last week.”
Whole cultures could now be programmed to keep their
emotional climate stable in the same way that we have begun
to know something about maintaining equilibrium in the
commercial economies of the world.