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Understanding McLuhan
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06510_Field_TCUM T75.txt
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1996-04-10
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889b
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16 lines
The decision to use the hot printed medium in place of
the cool, participational, telephone medium is unfortunate in
the extreme. No doubt the decision was prompted by the
literary bias of the West for the printed form, on the ground
that it is more impersonal than the telephone. The printed form
has quite different implications in Moscow from what it has in
Washington. So with the telephone. The Russians’ love of this
instrument, so congenial to their oral traditions, is owing to the
rich nonvisual involvement it affords. The Russian uses the
telephone for the sort of effects we associate with the eager
conversation of the lapel-gripper whose face is twelve inches
away.
Both telephone and teleprinter as amplifications of the
unconscious cultural bias of Moscow, on one hand, and of
Washington, on the other, are invitations to monstrous