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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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06852_Field_TCUM T417.txt
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1996-04-10
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16 lines
wheel by linkage to the visual principle of mobile lineality, the
wheel acquired a new degree of intensity. The bicycle lifted the
wheel onto the plane of aerodynamic balance, and not too
indirectly created the airplane. It was no accident that the
Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics, or that early airplanes
seemed in some ways like bicycles. The transformations of
technology have the character of organic evolution because all
technologies are extensions of our physical being. Samuel
Butler raised great admiration in Bernard Shaw by his insight
that the evolutionary process had been fantastically
accelerated by transference to the machine mode. Shaw,
however, was happy to leave the matter in this delightfully
opaque state. Butler, himself, had at least indicated that
machines were given vicarious powers of reproduction by their
subsequent impact upon the very bodies that had brought
them into being by extension. Response to the increased power