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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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08752_Field_TCGG T517.txt
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1996-04-10
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features of song, dance, painting, perception, poetry,
architecture, and town planning? (49)
Print is the extreme phase of alphabet culture that
detribalizes or decollectivizes man in the first instance. Print
raises the visual features of alphabet to highest intensity of
definition. Thus print carries the individuating power of the
phonetic alphabet much further than manuscript culture could
ever do. Print is the technology of individualism. If men decided
to modify this visual technology by an electric technology,
individualism will also be modified. To raise a moral complaint
about this is like cussing a buzz-saw for lopping off fingers.
“But,” someone says, “we didn’t know it would happen.” Yet
even witlessness is not a moral issue. It is a problem, but not a
moral problem; and it would be nice to clear away some of the
moral fogs that surround our technologies. It would be good for