Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07016_Field_TCUM T581.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 932b | 16 lines

     In the same year, 1844, then, that men were playing
chess and lotteries on the first American telegraph, Soren
Kierkegaard published The Concept of Dread . The Age of
Anxiety had begun. For with the telegraph, man had initiated
that outering or extension of his central nervous system that is
now approaching an extension of consciousness with satellite
broadcasting. To put one’s nerves outside, and one’s physical
organs inside the nervous system, or the brain, is to initiate a
situation—if not a concept—of dread.

     Having glanced at the major trauma of the telegraph on
conscious life, noting that it ushers in the Age of Anxiety and
of Pervasive Dread, we can turn to some specific instances of
this uneasiness and growing jitters. Whenever any new medium
or human extension occurs, it creates a new myth for itself,
usually associated with a major figure: Aretino, the Scourge of