Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07042_Field_TCUM T607.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 942b | 16 lines

by the pundits. They thought, however, that it might be of use
to authors, clergymen, and telegraph operators. Even
newspapers were lukewarm about this machine for some time.

     Once any part of the economy feels a step-up in pace, the
rest of the economy has to follow suit. Soon, no business could
be indifferent to the greatly increased pace set by the
typewriter. It was the telephone, paradoxically, that sped the
commercial adoption of the typewriter. The phrase “Send me a
memo on that,” repeated into millions of phones daily, helped
to create the huge expansion of the typist function. Northcote
Parkinson’s law that “work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion” is precisely the zany dynamic
provided by the telephone. In no time at all, the telephone
expanded the work to be done on the typewriter to huge
dimensions. Pyramids of paperwork rise on the basis of a small