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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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06851_Field_TCUM T416.txt
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1996-04-10
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16 lines
organic process and movement by pushing the mechanical
principle to the point of reversal is a pattern that appears in all
human extensions, whatever, as they reach a peak of
performance. By speed-up, the airplane rolls up the highway
into itself. The road disappears into the plane at take-off, and
the plane becomes a missile, a self-contained transportation
system. At this point the wheel is reabsorbed into the form of
bird or fish that the plane becomes as it takes to the air. Skin-
divers need no path or road, and claim that their motion is like
that of bird flight; their feet cease to exist as the progressive,
sequential movement that is the origin of rotary action of the
wheel. Unlike wing or fin, the wheel is lineal and requires road for
its completion.
It was the tandem alignment of wheels that created the
velocipede and then the bicycle, for with the acceleration of