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06767_Field_TCUM T332.txt
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1996-04-10
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16 lines
measured time scents would tend to be so cohesive and so
profoundly unified as to resist every kind of change.
Lewis Mumford has suggested that the clock preceded
the printing press in order of influence on the mechanization of
society. But Mumford takes no account of the phonetic
alphabet as the technology that had made possible the visual
and uniform fragmentation of time. Mumford, in fact, is
unaware of the alphabet as the source of Western mechanism,
just as he is unaware of mechanization as the translation of
society from audile-tactile modes into visual values. Our new
electric technology is organic and non-mechanical in tendency
because it extends, not our eyes, but our central nervous
systems as a planetary vesture. In the space-time world of
electric technology, the older mechanical time begins to feel
unacceptable, if only because it is uniform.