Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06565_Field_TCUM T130.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 921b | 16 lines

and more into the form of information, moving toward the
technological extension of consciousness. That is what is
meant when we say that we daily know more and more about
man. We mean that we can translate more and more of
ourselves into other forms of expression that exceed ourselves.
Man is a form of expression who is traditionally expected to
repeat himself and to echo the praise of his Creator. “Prayer,”
said George Herbert, “is reversed thunder.” Man has the power
to reverberate the Divine thunder, by verbal translation.

     By putting our physical bodies inside our extended
nervous systems, by means of electric media, we set up a
dynamic by which all previous technologies that are mere
extensions of hands and feet and teeth and bodily heat-
controls—all such extensions of our bodies, including cities—will
be translated into information systems. Electromagnetic