home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Understanding McLuhan
/
Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
/
pc
/
mcluhan.dxr
/
06783_Field_TCUM T348.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-04-10
|
1KB
|
16 lines
life for the synchronization of human tasks. The acceptance of
such fragmenting of life into minutes and hours was
unthinkable, save in highly literate communities. Readiness to
submit the human organism to the alien mode of mechanical
time was as dependent upon literacy in the first Christian
centuries as it is today. For the clock to dominate, there has to
be the prior acceptance of the visual stress that is inseparable
from phonetic literacy. Literacy is itself an abstract asceticism
that prepares the way for endless patterns of privation in the
human community. With universal literacy, time can take on
the character of an enclosed or pictorial space that can be
divided and subdivided. It can be filled-in. “My schedule is filled
up.” It can be kept free: “I have a free week next month.” And
as Sebastian de Grazia has shown in Of Time, Work and
Leisure , all the free time in the world is not leisure, because
leisure accepts neither the division of labor that constitutes