media theory

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.

technical change alters not only habits of life, but patterns of thought and valuation,

the man in a literate and homogenized society ceases to be sensitive to the diverse and discontinuous life of forms. He acquires the illusion of the third dimension and the “private point of view” as part of his Narcissus fixation, and is quite shut off from Blake’s awareness or that of the Psalmist, that we become what we behold.

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

As work is replaced by the sheer movement of information, money as a store of work merges with the informational forms of credit and credit card. From coin to paper currency, and from currency to credit card there is a steady progression toward commercial exchange as the movement of information itself.

The capitulation of Western man to his technology, with its crescendo of specialized demands, has always appeared to many observers of our world as a kind of enslavement

In cars, in clothes, in paperback books; in beards, babies, and beehive hairdos, the American has declared for stress on touch, on participation, involvement, and sculptural values.

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