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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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07258_Field_TCUM T823.txt
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1996-04-10
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Automation certainly assumes the servomechanism and
the computer. That is to say, it assumes electricity as store
and expediter of information. These traits of store, or
“memory,” and accelerator are the basic features of any
medium of communication whatever. In the case of electricity,
it is not corporeal substance that is stored or moved, but
perception and information. As for technological acceleration, it
now approaches the speed of light. All nonelectric media had
merely hastened things a bit. The wheel, the road, the ship, the
airplane, and even the space rocket are utterly lacking in the
character of instant movement. Is it strange, then, that
electricity should confer on all previous human organization a
completely new character? The very toil of man now becomes a
kind of enlightenment. As unfallen Adam in the Garden of Eden
was appointed the task of the contemplation and naming of
creatures, so with automation. We have now only to name and