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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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08393_Field_TCGG T158.txt
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1996-04-10
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881b
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16 lines
above civilization artistically but without the phonetic alphabet
they remain tribal, as do the Chinese and the Japanese. It is
necessary to stress that my concern is with the process of
separation of sense by which the detribalizing of men is
achieved. Whether such personal abstraction and social
detribalization be a “good thing” is not for any individual to
determine. But a recognition of the process may disembarrass
the matter of the miasmal moral fogs that now invest it.
The alphabet is an aggressive and militant absorber and
transformer of cultures, as Harold Innis was the first to show.
* Another observation of Diringer’s that deserves comment is
the acceptability among all peoples of a technology that uses
letters to “represent single sounds rather than ideas or
syllables.” Another way of putting this is to say that any