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Understanding McLuhan
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06700_Field_TCUM T265.txt
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1996-04-10
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length of an arc, and all that need be done is to inscribe in the
arc a sequence of rectilinear contours of an increasing number
of sides. When these contours approach a limit, the length of
the arc becomes the limit of this sequence. The older method of
determining volumes by liquid displacement is thus translated
into abstract visual terms by calculus. The principles regarding
the concept of length apply also to notions of areas, volumes,
masses, moments, pressures, forces, stresses and strains,
velocities and accelerations.
The miracle-maker, the sheer function of the infinitely
fragmented and repeatable, became the means of making
visually flat, straight, and uniform all that was nonvisual: the
skew, the curved, and the bumpy. In the same way, the
phonetic alphabet had, centuries before, invaded the
discontinuous cultures of the barbarians, and translated their