Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07250_Field_TCUM T815.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 954b | 16 lines

the most diverse and specialized areas and organs of action is
quite the opposite of organization in a mechanized society.
Mechanization of any process is achieved by fragmentation,
beginning with the mechanization of writing by movable types,
which has been called the “monofracture of manufacture.”

     The electric telegraph, when crossed with typography,
created the strange new form of the modern newspaper. Any
page of the telegraph press is a surrealistic mosaic of bits of
“human interest” in vivid interaction. Such was the art form of
Chaplin and the early silent movies. Here, too, an extreme
speed-up of mechanization, an assembly line of still shots on
celluloid, led to a strange reversal. The movie mechanism, aided
by the electric light, created the illusion of organic form and
movement as much as a fixed position had created the illusion
of perspective on a flat surface five hundred years before.