Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07145_Field_TCUM T710.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 948b | 16 lines

message , the controls go beyond programming. The restraints
are always directed to the “content,” which is always another
medium. The content of the press is literary statement, as the
content of the book is speech, and the content of the movie is
the novel. So the effects of radio are quite independent of its
programming. To those who have never studied media, this
fact is quite as baffling as literacy is to natives, who say, “Why
do you write? Can’t you remember?”

     Thus, the commercial interests who think to render media
universally acceptable, invariably settle for “entertainment” as
a strategy of neutrality. A more spectacular mode of the
ostrich-head-in-sand could not be devised, for it ensures
maximal persuasiveness for any medium whatever. The literate
community will always argue for a controversial or point-of-view
use of press, radio, and movie that would in effect diminish the