Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06908_Field_TCUM T473.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

reading as a form of paid employment. I was not wrong in
supposing that he would be incredulous. Nevertheless, all media
that mix ads with other programming are a form of “paid
learning.” In years to come, when the child will be paid to learn,
educators will recognize the sensational press as the forerunner
of paid learning. One reason that it was difficult to see this fact
earlier is that the processing and moving of information had
not been the main business of a mechanical and industrial
world. It is, however, easily the dominant business and means
of wealth in the electric world. At the end of the mechanical age
people still imagined that press and radio and even TV were
merely forms of information paid for by the makers and users
of “hardware,” like cars and soap and gasoline. As automation
takes hold, it becomes obvious that information  is the crucial
commodity, and that solid products are merely incidental to
information movement. The early stages by which information