In terms of the learning and educational process, The Gutenberg era of our Western world saw the suppression of dialogue in favor of visual systems and blueprints of knowledge laid out in “subjects” and “fields” packaged in varying degrees of processing and predigestion. Our Gutenberg technology enabled us to “apply” knowledge freely; that is, we learned how to translate every sort of knowledge into single planes of homogeneous kind. Applied knowledge is a process of translation and reduction of varied forms into a single form.
“We Need a New Picture of Knowledge,” in New Insights and the Curriculum (Washington, DC: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, (1963), p 62
Year: 1963
Chapter:
Education
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan