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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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06668_Field_TCUM T233.txt
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1996-04-10
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At electric speed, however, all that is reversed. Implosion
and contraction then replace mechanical explosion and
expansion. If the Handlin formula is extended to power, it
becomes: “As power grew, and as outlying areas became
accessible to power, it was localized in distinctive delegated
jobs and functions.” This formula is a principle of acceleration
at all levels of human organization. It concerns especially those
extensions of our physical bodies that appear in wheel and road
and paper messages. Now that we have extended not just our
physical organs but the nervous system, itself, in electric
technology, the principle of specialism and division as a factor
of speed no longer applies. When information moves at the
speed of signals in the central nervous system, man is
confronted with the obsolescence of all earlier forms of
acceleration, such as road and rail. What emerges is a total
field of inclusive awareness. The old patterns of psychic and