Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07024_Field_TCUM T589.txt

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

dissolved by the invention of the telegraph, which now
encouraged provincial competition. The telegraph freed the
marginal provincial press from dependence on the big
metropolitan press. In the whole field of the electric revolution,
this pattern of decentralization appears in multiple guises. It is
Sir Lewis Namier’s view that telephone and airplane are the
biggest single cause of trouble in the world today. Professional
diplomats with delegated powers have been supplanted by
prime ministers, presidents, and foreign secretaries, who think
they could conduct all important negotiations personally. This
is also the problem encountered in big business, where it has
been found impossible to exercise delegated authority when
using the telephone. The very nature of the telephone, as all
electric media, is to compress and unify that which had
previously been divided and specialized. Only the “authority of
knowledge” works by telephone because of the speed that