Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08992_Field_TCGG T757.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 950b | 15 lines

as the language of forms. And this structuralist approach to
experience engenders the awareness that “unconsciousness in
relation to the one who knows is nonexistence.” (85) That is to
say, that in so far as print structured language and experience
and motivation in new ways not recognized in conscious ways,
life was impoverished by mesmerism. Earlier in this volume,
Shakespeare was shown as providing his contemporaries with a
working model of print technology in action. For the separation
of functions by mechanical inertia is the foundation of movable
types and applied knowledge in all domains. It is a technique of
reduction to a single level of problems, talents, and solutions
alike. Thus Dr. Johnson “was scandalized by the untimeliness of
many of Shakespeare’s puns. For a character to quibble in the
teeth of death, as many do in the plays, was contrary to
‘reason, propriety and truth’.”  (86)