home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Understanding McLuhan
/
Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
/
pc
/
mcluhan.dxr
/
08531_Field_TCGG T296.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-04-10
|
833b
|
16 lines
nonliterate and the literate. The components of Gutenberg
technology were not new. But when brought together in the
fifteenth century there was an acceleration of social and
personal action tantamount to “take off” in the sense that W.
W. Rostow develops this concept in The Stages of Economic
Growth “that decisive interval in the history of a society when
growth becomes its normal condition.”
In his Golden Bough (vol. I, p. xii), James Frazer points to
the similar acceleration introduced into the oral world by
literacy and visuality:
“Compared with the evidence afforded by living tradition,
the testimony of ancient books on the subject of early
religion is worth very little. For literature accelerates the
advance of thought at a rate which leaves the slow