Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07239_Field_TCUM T804.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

     The city, itself, is traditionally a military weapon, and is a
collective shield or plate armor, an extension of the castle of
our very skins. Before the huddle of the city, there was the
food-gathering phase of man the hunter, even as men have
now in the electric age returned psychically and socially to the
nomad state. Now, however, it is called information-gathering
and data-processing. But it is global, and it ignores and
replaces the form of the city which has, therefore, tended to
become obsolete. With instant electric technology, the globe
itself can never again be more than a village, and the very
nature of city as a form of major dimensions must inevitably
dissolve like a fading shot in a movie. The first circumnavigation
of the globe in the Renaissance gave men a sense of embracing
and possessing the earth that was quite new, even as the
recent astronauts have again altered man’s relation to the
planet, reducing its scope to the extent of an evening’s stroll.