home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Understanding McLuhan
/
Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
/
pc
/
mcluhan.dxr
/
06632_Field_TCUM T197.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-04-10
|
1KB
|
16 lines
It was not until the advent of the telegraph that
messages could travel faster than a messenger. Before this,
roads and the written word were closely interrelated. It is only
since the telegraph that information has detached itself from
such solid commodities as stone and papyrus, much as money
had earlier detached itself from hides, bullion, and metals, and
has ended as paper. The term “communication” has had an
extensive use in connection with roads and bridges, sea routes,
rivers, and canals, even before it became transformed into
“information movement” in the electric age. Perhaps there is no
more suitable way of defining the character of the electric age
than by first studying the rise of the idea of transportation as
communication, and then the transition of the idea from
transport to information by means of electricity. The word
“metaphor” is from the Greek meta plus pherein , to carry
across or transport. In this book we are concerned with all