Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07064_Field_TCUM T629.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 970b | 16 lines

     Today the junior executive can get on a first-name basis
with seniors in different parts of the country. “You just start
telephoning. Anybody an walk into any manager’s office by
telephone. By ten o’clock of the day I hit the New York office I
was calling everybody by their first names.”

     The telephone is an irresistible intruder in time or place, so
that high executives attain immunity to its call only when
dining at head tables. In its nature the telephone is an intensely
personal form that ignores all the claims of visual privacy prized
by literate man. One firm of stockbrokers recently abolished all
private offices for its executives, and settled them around a
kind of seminar table. It was felt that the instant decisions that
had to be made based on the continuous flow of teletype and
other electric media could only receive group approval fast
enough if private space were abolished. When on the alert, even