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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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07073_Field_TCUM T638.txt
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1996-04-10
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records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and
fleeting communication.” These words of Edison, published in
the North American Review of June, 1878, illustrate how the
then recent telephone invention already had the power to color
thinking in other fields. So, the record player had to be seen as
a kind of phonetic record of telephone conversation. Hence, the
names “phonograph” and “gramophone.”
Behind the immediate popularity of the phonograph was
the entire electric implosion that gave such new stress and
importance to actual speech rhythms in music, poetry, and
dance alike. Yet the phonograph was a machine merely. It did
not at first use an electric motor or circuit. But in providing a
mechanical extension of the human voice and the new ragtime
melodies, the phonograph was propelled into a central place by
some of the major currents of the age. The fact of acceptance