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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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07076_Field_TCUM T641.txt
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1996-04-10
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contained all answers when one could discover a means of
rendering them explicit. In his own case, his determination to
give the phonograph, like the telephone, a direct practical use
in business procedures led to his neglect of the instrument as a
means of entertainment. Failure to foresee the phonograph as
a means of entertainment was really a failure to grasp the
meaning of the electric revolution in general. In our time we are
reconciled to the phonograph as a toy and a solace; but press,
radio, and TV have also acquired the same dimension of
entertainment. Meantime, entertainment pushed to an extreme
becomes the main form of business and politics. Electric media,
because of their total “field” character, tend to eliminate the
fragmented specialties of form and function that we have long
accepted as the heritage of alphabet, printing, and
mechanization. The brief and compressed history of the
phonograph includes all phases of the written, the printed, and