media theory

the beholding of idols, or the use of technology, conforms men to them.

the invention of Euclidean space is, itself, a direct result of the action of the phonetic alphabet on the human senses.

The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs.

The square room or house speaks the language of the sedentary specialist, while the round hut or igloo, like the conical wigwam, tells of the integral nomadic ways of food-gathering communities.

Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the power to act without reacting

Each new technology creates an environment that is itself regarded as corrupt and degrading. Yet the new one turns its predecessor into an art form.

For just as a metaphor transforms and transmits experience, so do the media.

men are never aware of the ground rules of their environmental systems or cultures. Today technologies and their consequent environments succeed each other so rapidly that one environment makes us aware of the next.

Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide.