Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/07274_Field_TCUM T839.txt

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

released the horse and projected it onto the plane of
entertainment, so does automation with men. We are suddenly
threatened with a liberation that taxes our inner resources of
self-employment and imaginative participation in society. This
would seem to be a fate that calls men to the role of artist in
society. It has the effect of making most people realize how
much they had come to depend on the fragmentalized and
repetitive routines of the mechanical era. Thousands of years
ago man, the nomadic food-gatherer, had taken up positional,
or relatively sedentary, tasks. He began to specialize. The
development of writing and printing were major stages of that
process. They were supremely specialist in separating the roles
of knowledge from the roles of action, even though at times it
could appear that “the pen is mightier than the sword.” But
with electricity and automation, the technology of fragmented
processes suddenly fused with the human dialogue and the