Download Week Four - ACC2013

ACC2013
New Media
Week 4
‘Understanding Media’:
What is Media Theory?
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Lecture Overview
• Medium Theory
• Harold Innis and the Bias
of Communication
– Time and Space Bias
– Monopolies of Knowledge
• Marshall McLuhan
– “The medium is the
message”
– The Global Village
– Critiques of McLuhan
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Week Four
‘Understanding Media’: What is Media Theory?
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Lecture:
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Tutorial:
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Analysis and discussion of the early study of media. What does Innis mean by ‘the bias of
communication’? What does McLuhan mean by “the medium is the message”? Are the insights of
the Toronto School still relevant today?
Essential Reading:
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As modern communication technology became more deeply integrated into everyday life with the
emergence of the TV, media became subjected to comprehensive scholarly study for the first
time. Among the first to take a more sustained approach to theorizing media were the ‘Toronto
School’ led by Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. Their major contribution was the attention
paid to not just the social, political and economic impacts of media, but how they recalibrate our
ratio of sensory perception.
Heyer, P, & Crowley, D 1991, ‘Introduction’, in H Innis, The Bias of Communication, University of
Toronto Press, Toronto, pp. xiv-xxvi.
Scannell, P 2007, ‘Communication and Technology: Innis, McLuhan, Canada 1950s-1960s’,
Media and Communication. Sage, London, pp. 123-143.
Further Reading:
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Innis, H 1951, The Bias of Communication, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Carey, J 1998, ‘Space, time and communications: a tribute to Harold Innis’, in Communication as
Culture, Routledge, London.
Kittler, F 1999, Gramaphone, Film, Typewriter, Stanford University Press, Stanford.
McLuhan, M 1964, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Routledge, London.
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Course Details
• Coordinator/Tutor: Jonathan Yu
• Email: [email protected]
• Unit Blog: http://acc2013.wordpress.com/
• Unit Reader
– Available now from book shop.
– Week 5 and 10 readings on unit blog.
• Tutorials:
– St Albans:
• 10:00-11:00am – Room 3N24
• 11:00-12:00pm – Room 3N24 (Cancelled)
– Footscray Park:
• 1:00-2:00pm – Room C226
• 4:00-5:00pm – Room E319
• 5:00-6:00pm – Room E319 (Cancelled)
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• “[Harold Innis took] the measure of media effects
not in terms of individual responses to content,
but in terms of how each medium, as it
developed, restructured the broader patterns of
[political, economic and cultural] interaction.”
– Heyer and Crowley
• “We don’t know who discovered water, but it
wasn’t the fish.”
– Marshall McLuhan
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What is ‘Medium Theory’?
• Medium theory examines the
inherent qualities of a given medium.
• Studies the influences of
communication technologies as
distinct from the content (or
messages) contained therein.
– A medium enables and constrains both
the kinds of communication and forms of
knowledge.
• The Toronto School is the source of
Medium Theory.
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The Toronto School
• A loosely connected group of scholars, most of
whom were at the University of Toronto:
– Harold Innis
– Marshall McLuhan (The Gutenberg Galaxy,
Understanding Media)
– Eric Havelock (Preface to Plato)
– Jack Goody and Ian Watt (The Consequences of
Literacy)
– Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy)
• The Toronto School shared a focus on the historical
impact of communication technologies on
– Modes of thinking.
– Perception and behaviour.
– Political and economic formations.
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What is ‘Medium Theory’?
• “[Medium theory examines] the potential
influences of communication technologies in
addition to and apart from the content they
convey.”
– Joshua Meyrowitz
• In more detailed terms, medium theory
examines the following:
– The senses required to attend to the medium.
– The effects of that medium on the
senses/perception.
– The intrinsic properties of particular media
technologies.
– The structural effects of particular media
technologies on society, culture, politics and
the economy.
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Key Thinker: Harold Innis
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Professor of Political Economy at the University of
Toronto.
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Significant contributions to the early study of media and
communication.
– First to develop what became known as Medium Theory
– i.e. that the central ‘effect’ of a medium is not its content
but the way it restructures society in political, economic,
and cultural terms.
•
Interested in the impact on political and economic
power by:
– i) modes of communication (i.e. orality and literacy) and
– ii) media technology (e.g. writing on clay vs print via a
printing press)
– Specifically, how did media contribute to an empire’s
ability to reproduce itself across space maintain influence
over time?
•
Key Texts:
– Empire and Communications (1950)
– The Bias of Communication (1951)
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Innis’s Basic Thesis
• Each medium has a bias toward either space
or time.
• These biases of communication tend to
support different kinds of
– i) Political states and economic markets.
– ii) Control of information (‘monopolies of
knowledge’).
• That is, different media, using different
materials, have different consequences for
the control of space and time. This facilitates
– a) power—over space or time
– b) the production of knowledge
• How can a medium be accessed and its
content preserved:
– over time or space
– how can it be controlled?
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Innis and the Staples Thesis
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Staples thesis
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Fur, fish, timber, wood pulp, minerals drive
the development of colonies.
Anticipates important elements of his
later scholarship on media and
communication:
a) Centre-periphery dynamic (i.e. EnglandCanada/Australia)
b) The spatial characteristics of markets and
empires:
•
•
Ocean transport favoured light and valuable
staples (eg fur).
Inland waterways favoured bulk commodities
(eg lumber, minerals).
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From Staples to Imperialism Thesis
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Broader ‘imperialism thesis’.
–
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His interest in media, in part, was spurred on by
the economic lifecycle of one particular ‘staple’:
wood pulp.
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–
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Relevant to Canada and Australia.
US would import wood pulp from Canada (processed
as paper)
Then it would export back into Canada the finished
products: “newspapers, books, magazines and,
above all, advertising."
Imperialism thesis applies to how dominant powers
act toward other countries
–
–
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“in the name of freedom”
“the spirit of free trade”
US able to attain a cultural hegemony, exporting
commodities of the ‘good life’.
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Historical Context
A Chronology of the Development of Key Technologies
• Fire - 500,000 BC
– Allowed proto-humans to move ‘out of Africa’
to cooler climates
– Homo Sapiens (the anatomically modern
human species) did not appear until 200,000
BC
• Agriculture - 10,000-8000 BC
– Cultivation of grain, domestication of animals.
– Foundational technology because it facilitated
the shift from nomadic huntergatherer
societies to pastoral (settled communities)
societies.
– Plough - 4000 BC
– Pottery, clay bricks, and linen cloth - 70006000 BC
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Historical Context
A Chronology of the Development of Key Technologies
• Wheel - 4000 BC
– Sumerians were among the first to use carts
with wheels
• Literacy - 3100 BC
– Sumerian cuneiforms appeared first, followed
by Egyptian hieroglyphs.
– Both were forms of pictographs.
• Calendar - 2800 BC
– Initially a lunar calendar which required the
insertion of an extra month every four years.
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Historical Context
A Chronology of the Development of Key Technologies
• Papyrus - 2300 BC
– First made in Ancient Egypt
– Not paper; like woven cloth (spliced stalks of
the papyrus plant).
• Coins - 700 BC
– Ancient Greece, under King Lydia who
advocated their use for trade.
• Roads - 350 BC
– Rome was the first empire to build an
extensive road system
– Built 85,000 Km of roads stretching from
Spain to Persia (Iran), and from North Africa
to England.
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Historical Context
A Chronology of Ancient Civilizations
Civilization
Era
Details
Sumerians (Mesopotamia)
3500-2370 BC
Year-round agriculture;
writing (clay); wheel.
Ancient Egypt
3200-400 BC
Hieroglyphs; pyramids.
Indus (India-Pakistan)
2500-1700 BC
Uniform weights.
Akkadians (Mesopotamia)
2400-1900 BC
Linguistic assimilation.
Ancient China
2400-300 BC
Writing (oracle bones);
lunar calendar.
Ur Dynasty (Mesopotamia)
2125-2000 BC
Built the great Ziggurat.
Babylonia (Mesopotamia)
1900-1100 BC
Code of Hammurabi; early
advances in Mathematics
and Astronomy; metalworking; textile weaving.
Hittites (Turkey)
1700-1200 BCE
forerunners of the Iron Age;
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chariots
Historical Context
A Chronology of Ancient Civilizations
Civilization
Era
Details
Ancient India
1200-500 BC
Metal-working; craft
industry.
Mesoamerica
(Mayan/Aztec)
1200 BC - 1492 AD
Courier communication
and roads.
Assyrians (Mesopotamia)
1100-600 BCE
Developed engineering.
Ancient Greece
1100-50 BC
Mathematics; philosophy.
Persian Empire (Iran)
550-300 BC
Qanat water management
system.
Roman Republic
500-27 BC
Widespread Literacy.
Roman Empire
27 BC - 300 AD
Largest empire in the
world, ranging across
Europe to North Africa to
the Middle East to the
Balkans to Asia Minor.
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The Bias of Communication
• At any moment in history there is a dominant form of media.
• “Each epoch is distinguished by dominant forms of media that
absorb, record, and transform information into systems of knowledge
consonant with the institutional power structure of the society in
question.” (Heyer and Crowley)
• Political and economic power always seeks control over the means
of communication.
• Empires seek to endure over time and extend over space
• Innis characterised empires by their dominant mode of
communication:
– a mode of communication corresponds with an historical epochs
– each epoch has its own ‘bias of communication’ (time or space)
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The Bias of Communication
• Innisian ‘modes of communication’
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Orality (Time Bias)
Literacy - stone, clay, and parchment (Time Bias)
Literacy - papyrus and paper (Space Bias)
Literacy - moveable type (Space Bias)
Electronic - telegraph and radio (Space Bias)
• Breaks down the history literacy into two major periods:
– i) Writing
• Stone and clay—Mesopotamia
• Papyrus—Egypt; early Graeco-Roman
• Parchment (codex)—Roman empire; early Middle Ages
– ii) Print
• China (10th century)
• Europe—1450
• He makes this schematic overview because of his central thesis:
– “Large-scale political organizations such as empires must be considered
from the standpoint of two dimensions, those of space and time, and
persist by overcoming the bias of media which overemphasize either
dimension.” – Harold Innis
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The Bias of Communication: Time Bias
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Time biased media tend to support religious power
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A characteristic of media such as stone and clay (also
parchment):
– both heavy and durable
– do not move easily
– not good for territorial expansion because neglects space,
administration and law
– good for duration over time
– facilitate the production of traditional knowledge
– typified by sacred knowledge and a priestly class (hierarchy)
Ancient Egypt
• Hieroglyphs (sacred script) carved on stone (3200 BCE-400CE)
– Mix of single consonant characters (like an alphabet) and
logographs (ideograms—representing ideas or things).
– Carved on the walls of temples and the pyramids.
– There were about 5000 different hieroglyphs
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The Bias of Communication: Space Bias
• Space biased media tend to support political
power.
• A characteristic of media such as papyrus,
then paper:
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light and portable medium
easily transportable over space
facilitates the spatial expansion of the state
communication medium is not durable over
time
– associated with secular societies
– hierarchy based on economic power
• Ancient Rome:
– a vast empire based on military and
economic power
– secular state seeking the conquest of space
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The Bias of Communication: Space Bias
Roman Empire
• The Roman Empire & Literacy
– Used literacy to extend imperial rule
– Literacy allowed rule to become centralized,
legalized, bureaucratized and militarized.
– First public library, mass production of books,
public reading.
• A spatial bias enables the establishment of
commercialism and empire.
• A temporal bias is grounded in tradition and
directed at the present and future.
• For any civilization to be stable, there needed
to be some equilibrium between its temporal
and spatial bias.
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The Bias of Communication: Time Bias
Ancient Greece
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Innis favoured the oral tradition of Ancient Greece:
– Categorizes speech (orality) as time biased
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Ancient Greece: the oral tradition
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–
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–
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debate in the Athenian agora
face-to-face philosophic discussions
required relative stability because of face-to-face communication
the oral transmission of knowledge has a particular lineage (ancestors) which
emphasizes stability
He notes the following written by the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato:
– “No intelligent person will ever be so bold as to put into language those things
which his reason has contemplated, especially not into a form that is unalterable—
which must be the case with what is expressed in written symbols.”
•
But perhaps the key for Innis was that Ancient Greece had the best of both
worlds
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The Greek alphabet was developed a few hundred years before Plato
– So it was a literate society, although orality remained the dominant medium.
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Monopolies of Knowledge
• Media technologies tend to create ‘monopolies
of knowledge’
• Develop under both time and space biased
communication.
• For Innis, knowledge relates to politics,
economics, and culture.
– Monopolies of knowledge facilitate the
centralization of power—in both state and cultural
forms.
• With the control of knowledge comes the ability
to
– i) frame reality within that society
– ii) to define what knowledge is legitimate
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Monopolies of Knowledge
Under a time-biased medium:
•
A) Ancient Egypt
– There was a royal monopoly of knowledge in Ancient Egypt when
the hieroglyph was limited to stone inscription.
– The introduction of papyrus undermines the royal monopoly
(carried out by the priestly class).
– A new class of scribes emerges.
– Thus writing and thought are secularized.
•
B) Sumer
– Innis notes that the heaviness of the stone and clay upon which
cuneiforms were inscribed, resulted in a decentralized society.
– Due to the resultant difficulties in political organization, Sumer fell
repeatedly.
– The ancient city of Babylon was established as the capital under
the king Hammurabi.
– The Code of Hammurabi was a stone tablet inscribed in 1760 BC
• it listed 282 different laws
• the establishment of those laws were a step toward overcoming the
time-biased medium of stone
• it facilitated a legal uniformity and a centralized system of
administration over a vast distance
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Monopolies of Knowledge
Under a time-biased medium:
• C) Phoenicians
– One of those civilizations ‘on the
margins’ (1200-800 BC)
• Maritime trader civilization located in
modern-day Lebanon and Syria.
• Traded across the Mediterranean
(from the Middle East to Spain to
North Africa).
– Phoenicians had access to papyrus.
– Their trade-based society also
necessitated an ability to
communicate in many different
languages.
– Thus the shift to the alphabet from the
pictogram/ideograph.
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Monopolies of Knowledge
Under a space-biased medium:
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Monopolies of knowledge also had spatial ramifications
– i.e. knowledge tended to be controlled in the centre and moved in a
unidirectional flow to the peripheries.
•
Time-biased epochs had a theocratic monopoly of knowledge
– e.g. the priests and divine kings of ancient Egypt
•
Space biased epochs had a secular monopoly of knowledge
– e.g. papyrus-based ancient Rome
– an economic and bureaucratic elite
•
Rome
– Innis notes how Rome, learning from Greece, benefited from the oral tradition
– Rome also set the conditions for spatial bias
• plentiful access to papyrus
• libraries had been brought from Greece
• laws were codified
•
Overall, this facilitated the unprecedented spatial expansion of the Roman
empire
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Monopolies of Knowledge
Transfer of Monopoly
From Space to Time: Parchment
• Parchment facilitates religious control while paper ushers in
secular control.
•
Rome began to replace fragile papyrus rolls with more durable
parchment..
•
Yet parchment was taken up with far greater zeal by religious
organizations than the bureaucratic administration.
•
This gave the Church a new monopoly of knowledge, and it
emphasized the production of religious texts over legal ones.
•
‘Pagan’ knowledge (which included much Greek philosophy) was
often forgotten—i.e. those papyrus scrolls were never copied into
parchment books.
–
“Never in the world’s history has so vast a literature been so radically
given over to destruction.” - Innis
•
Monasteries were established all over Europe and virtually all of
them had scribes.
•
Holy Roman Empire (Christian) was re-established.
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Monopolies of Knowledge
Transfer of Monopoly
From Time to Space: Print
• But by the 13th C, the art of paper making
was developed in Italy.
•
“Decline of the monopoly of knowledge
based on parchment in which an
ecclesiastical organization emphasized
control over time followed the competition of
paper which supported the growth of trade
and of cities, the rise of vernaculars, and the
increasing importance of lawyers and
emphasized the concept of space in
nationalism.”
•
Thus the monasteries gave way to secular
copyist guilds which gave way to the printing
press.
– facilitated the emergence of the
Enlightenment—“thought gained lightness”
– but this also makes administration more
efficient—enabling territorial expansion and
new empires
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Key Thinker: Marshall McLuhan
• Younger colleague of Innis at University of
Toronto.
• Writes in a non-linear, aphoristic style -‘probes’.
• Focused on the ‘psychologizing’ (cognitive)
effects of media.
– The relationship between media and the senses
– Phenomenological
• Studied media at the beginning of the global
‘electronic age’ (eg TV).
• McLuhan enjoyed significant fame in popular
culture.
• Key Text: Understanding Media (1964)
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McLuhan and Media
• “The effects of technology do not occur at the level
of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or
patterns of perception steadily and without
resistance.” - McLuhan
– Our acceptance of media is subliminal and docile.
• The effects are imperceptible because the dominant
medium under which we live ‘calibrates’ our senses
when we are young.
• Each medium acts as an extension of the body.
• The message of a given medium is this extension
– The personal and social consequences of any medium
(i.e. of any extension of ourselves) result from the new
scale that is introduced into our affairs by each or by
any new technology.
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The Medium is the Message
• The message of any given medium:
– The change (of scale, pace, or pattern) it
introduces into human affairs.
• Media accelerate and enlarge previous
human functions
– Change and transformation are the constant
message of different media
• So the first way in which the medium is the
message is its extension of our body, the
change in scale and intensity of human
action and association.
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The Medium is the Message
• There is a second way in which the
medium is the message:
– Each medium has its own message (or
content).
– The content of a new medium is always the
one it succeeds.
• The content (‘message’) of media as:
–
–
–
–
Content of speech = nonverbal thought.
Content of writing = speech.
Content of print = the written word.
Content of the telegraph = print.
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The Global Village
• Time and space are shrunk by media technology.
• McLuhan coined the phrase the ‘global village’ in the early 1960s.
• Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have
extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace,
abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.
Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man—the
technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process
of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole
of human society, much as we have already extended our senses
and our nerves by the various media.
– McLuhan in Understanding Media
• McLuhan saw this unfolding through ‘electronic circuitry’ wherein
‘information flowed’.
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Critiques of McLuhan
1.
His aphoristic style of writing in ‘probes’ is simply
devoid of rigour and too impressionistic.
2.
His insight into the cognitive effects of media on sense
perception is devoid of any context.
–
–
–
3.
Doesn’t comment on ownership, control and regulation of
media.
Not interested in media content.
No political analysis of media.
He is a technological determinist.
–
–
Overemphasis on technology to transform social world.
Overlooks political and economic forces.
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Lecture Summary
• Medium Theory
– Properties of a medium and effects on society.
• Innis and the Bias of Communication.
– “Different media, using different materials, have different consequences
for the control of time & space” - Scannell
– Time and space bias.
– Monopolies of knowledge.
• The medium is the message.
– To understand the effect of media on our senses we should focus on the
properties of the medium itself, not the content.
– Media ‘as the extensions of man’ - extend the senses and human activity
in time & space.
• The Global Village
– “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of
a global village” – McLuhan
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