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06684_Field_TCUM T249.txt
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1996-04-10
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16 lines
were he determined to cling to the fragmented and individualist
ways that he has derived from the printed word in particular,
would be well advised to scrap all his electric technology since
the telegraph. The implosive (compressional) character of the
electric technology plays the disk or film of Western man
backward, into the heart of tribal darkness, or into what
Joseph Conrad called “the Africa within.” The instant character
of electric information movement does not enlarge, but
involves, the family of man in the cohesive state of village
living.
It seems contradictory that the fragmenting and divisive
power of our analytic Western world should derive from an
accentuation of the visual faculty. This same visual sense is,
also, responsible for the habit of seeing all things as
continuous and connected. Fragmentation by means of visual