Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08841_Field_TCGG T606.txt

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

1620. Erasmus directed the new print technology to the
traditional uses of grammatica  and rhetoric and to tidying up
the sacred page. Bacon used the new technology for an
attempt to tidy up the text of Nature. In the different spirit of
these works one can gauge the efficacy of print in preparing
the mind for applied knowledge. But such change is not as
rapid or as thorough as many suppose. Again and again
Samuel Eliot Morison in his Admiral of the Ocean Sea  is baffled
by the inability of Columbus’ sailors to fend for themselves in
the circumstances of the New World: “Columbus embraced him,
as well he might; for there was not a crust left to eat aboard
the grounded caravels, and the Spaniards were starving. I
cannot understand why they were unable to catch fish . . .’  (p.
643) After all, the point of Robinson Crusoe  is the very novelty
of man as adaptable and resourceful, able to translate one kind
of experience into new patterns. Defoe’s work is the epic of