Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07045_Field_TCUM T610.txt

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

the work effort is applied at the “programming” level, and such
effort is one of information and knowledge. In the decision-
making and “make happen” aspect of the work operation, the
telephone and other such speed-ups of information have ended
the divisions of delegated authority in favor of the “authority of
knowledge.” It is as if a symphony composer, instead of
sending his manuscript to the printer and thence to the
conductor and to the individual members of the orchestra, were
to compose directly on an electronic instrument that would
render each note or theme as if on the appropriate instrument.
This would end at once all the delegation and specialism of the
symphony orchestra that makes it such a natural model of the
mechanical and industrial age. The typewriter, with regard to
the poet or novelist, comes very close to the promise of
electronic music, insofar as it compresses or unifies the various
jobs of poetic composition and publication.