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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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07077_Field_TCUM T642.txt
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1996-04-10
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the mechanized word. It was the advent of the electric tape
recorder that only a few years ago released the phonograph
from its temporary involvement in mechanical culture. Tape and
the l.p. record suddenly made the phonograph a means of
access to all the music and speech of the world.
Before turning to the l.p. and tape-recording revolution,
we should note that the earlier period of mechanical recording
and sound reproduction had one large factor in common with
the silent picture. The early phonograph produced a brisk and
raucous experience not unlike that of a Mack Sennett movie.
But the undercurrent of mechanical music is strangely sad. It
was the genius of Charles Chaplin to have captured for film this
sagging quality of a deep blues, and to have overlaid it with
jaunty jive and bounce. The poets and painters and musicians
of the later nineteenth century all insist on a sort of