Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06507_Field_TCUM T72.txt

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

nature of the typographic medium, it is the grosser and
participant forms of art that seem “hot,” and the abstract and
intensely literary form that seems “cool.” “You may perceive,
Madam,” said Dr. Johnson, with a pugilistic smile, “that I am
well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity.” And Dr.
Johnson was right in supposing that “well-bred” had come to
mean a white-shirted stress on attire that rivaled the rigor of
the printed page. “Comfort” consists in abandoning a visual
arrangement in favor of one that permits casual participation
of the senses, a state that is excluded when any one sense, but
especially the visual sense, is hotted up to the point of
dominant command of a situation.

     On the other hand, in experiments in which all outer
sensation is withdrawn, the subject begins a furious fill-in or
completion of senses that is sheer hallucination. So the