Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06654_Field_TCUM T219.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 920b | 16 lines

the idea of the “human scale” should have seemed quite
without appeal during the mechanical centuries.

     The natural tendency of the enlarged community of the
city is to increase the intensity and accelerate functions of
every sort, whether of speech, or crafts, or currency and
exchange. This, in turn, implies an inevitable extension of these
actions by subdivision or, what is the same thing, new
invention. So that even though the city was formed as a kind of
protective hide or shield for man, this protective layer was
purchased at the cost of maximized struggle within the walls.
War games such as those described by Herodotus began as
ritual blood baths between the citizenry. Rostrum, law courts,
and marketplace all acquired the intense image of divisive
competition that is nowadays called “the rat race.”
Nevertheless, it was amidst such irritations that man produced