Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08730_Field_TCGG T495.txt

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

worked out, it could be extended to the mechanizing of many
other actions. Moreover, the mere accustomation to the
repetitive, lineal patterns of the printed page strongly disposed
people to transfer such approaches to all kinds of problems.
Febvre and Martin say in L’Apparition du livre  (p. 28), for
example, that a great spur was applied to paper manufacture
as early as the eleventh century by the discovery of a method
which transformed “le movement circulaire en movement
alternatif.” The change was from mill to mallets, much like the
shift from periodic Ciceronian prose to Senecan “cutted period”
at the same time. A change from mill to mallets implies the
breaking up of continuous into segmental operations, and the
authors add: “This invention had been the origin of numerous
industrial upsets.” And print, which was to be the mother of all
the bouleversements  to come, was itself a veritable cluster or
galaxy of previously achieved technologies. Usher’s statement