The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan – McLuhan on the difference between cultures of oral tradition and those of textual information. Has the change created Jane Jacob’s Dark Age Ahead by de-emphasizing conversation and shared society?
“Tribal cultures even today simply cannot comprehend the concept of the individual or of the separate and independent citizen. Oral cultures act and react simultaneously, whereas the capacity to act without reacting, without involvement, is the special gift of “detached” literate man.”