Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06660_Field_TCUM T225.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 889b | 16 lines

Napoleon, with his citizen-armies, was the industrial revolution
itself, as it reached areas long protected from it.

     The Roman army as a mobile, industrial wealth-making
force created in addition a vast consumer public in the Roman
towns. Division of labor always creates a separation between
producer and consumer, even as it tends to separate the place
of work and the living space. Before Roman literate
bureaucracy, nothing comparable to the Roman consumer
specialists had been seen in the world. This fact was
institutionalized in the individual known as “parasite,” and in
the social institution of the gladiatorial games. (Panem et
circenses .) The private sponge and the collective sponge, both
reaching out for their rations of sensation, achieved a horrible
distinctness and clarity that matched the raw power of the
predatory army machine.