home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Understanding McLuhan
/
Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
/
pc
/
mcluhan.dxr
/
06847_Field_TCUM T412.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-04-10
|
900b
|
16 lines
American towns developed housing that was no longer within
sight of shop or factory. The railroad next took over the
development of the suburbs, with housing kept within walking
distance of the railroad stop. Shops and hotels around the
railroad gave some concentration and form to the suburb. The
automobile, followed by the airplane, dissolved this grouping
and ended the pedestrian, or human, scale of the suburb. Lewis
Mumford contends that the car turned the suburban housewife
into a full-time chauffeur. Certainly the transformations of the
wheel as expediter of tasks, and architect of ever-new human
relations, is far from finished, but its shading power is waning
in the electric age of information, and that fact makes us much
more aware of its characteristic form as now tending toward
the archaic.
Before the emergence of the wheeled vehicle, there was