The following Summary is taken from Chapter 19 of "Understanding Media"
Wheel, Bicycle, and Airplane
Summary: McLuhan stresses the revolutionary change of media as the message, but in this chapter he creates a “linguistic metaphor for the operation of media; “When such ablatives intrude, they alter the syntax of society.” (Editor, 244) We see the relationship between the mechanical to the organic form of technology.
Page 245: Revolutionary technology- extending the range and speed of human action, while being sensitive to the psychic and social implications of the technological extension of man…
Page 245-46: Invention of the wheel horse collar harness wagon (axles & brakes) streetcar railroad suburb automobile airplane car (human chauffeur)- the shaping power of technology is “waning in the electric age of information, and that fact makes us much more aware of its characteristic form as now tending toward the archaic.”
Page 247: Idea of the most complicated uses of the “wheel” is the “movie camera.” It is, by trade, an intricate set of wheels.
Page 249: The rhyme of Humpty Dumpty demonstrates the challenge of the electromagnetic automation.
Quotes worth mention:
…”Things need to be studied in isolation. This is the habit of specialism that quite naturally derives from typographic culture.” (245)
“Under stress, it is more natural to fragment our own bodily form, and to let part of it go into another material, than it is to transfer any of the emotions of external objects into another media.” (247)
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