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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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08870_Field_TCGG T635.txt
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1996-04-10
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873b
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16 lines
He was monster, it is true: to deny that is to belittle him;
but above all he was a man of his day, perhaps the most
free and complete expression of the age in which he
lived—the sixteenth century. That, and his enormous
ability, together with the fact that he founded the
modern press and used the hitherto unsuspected weapon
of publicity with an incomparable appreciation of its
power, are his chief claims upon our notice. (65)
Born two years after Rabelais, he was, like Rabelais, just
in time to seize the new instrument of the press. He became a
one-man newspaper, a single-handed Northcliffe.
He is, in a sense, in his “yellow” proclivities, the forerunner
of Mr. Hearst, Lord Northcliffe and others, while he is also
the father of the awful tribe of modern press agents,