Marshall McLuhan Quotes - Page 8

When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result.

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

We impose the form of the old on the content of the new.

The scientist rigorously defends his right to be ignorant of almost everything except his specialty.

Transmitted at the speed of light, all events on this planet are simultaneous. In the electric environment of information all events are simultaneous, there is no time or space separating events.

Except for light, all other media come in pairs, with one acting as the "content" of the other, obscuring the operation of both.

The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement.

A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.

In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.

Phenomenology is dialectic in ear-mode - a massive and decentralized quest for roots, for ground.

A moral point of view too often serves as a substitute for understanding in technological matters.

Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.

Education in a technological world of replaceable and expendable parts is neuter.

Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

I am a Christian according to my conscience in belief,in purpose and wish;Mnot of course by the orthodox standard. But I am content, and have a feeling of trust and safety. The Machiavellian mind and the merchant mind are at one in their simple faith in the power of segmental division to rule all--in the dichotomy of power and morals and of money and morals.

The circuited city of the future will not be the huge hunk of concentrated real estate created by the railway. It will take on a totally new meaning under conditions of very rapid movement. It will be an information megalopolis.

The photograph reverses the purpose of travel, which until now had been to encounter the strange and unfamiliar.

The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.

It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.

The student of media soon comes to expect the New Media of any period whatever to be classed as 'pseudo' by those who acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they may happen to be.

Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation.

The content or message of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the casing of an atomic bomb.

Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up. Growing up--thatis our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice.

Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.

Nothing is inevitable if we are willing to contemplate what is happening.