For centuries the lack of symmetry and proportion in all these areas has created a sort of universal spastic condition for lack of inter-relation among them. In merely terrestrial terms, programming the environment means, first of all, a kind of console for global thermostats to pattern all sensory life in a way conducive to comfort and happiness. Till now, only the artist has been permitted the opportunity to do this in the most puny fashion. The mass media, so-called, have offered new materials for the artist, but the understanding has been lacking. The computer abolishes the human past by making it entirely present. It makes natural and necessary dialogue among cultures which is as intimate as private speech, yet dispensing entirely with speech. While bemoaning the decline of literacy and the obsolescence of the book, the literati have typically ignored the imminence of the decline in speech itself. The individual word, as a store of information and feeling is already yielding to macroscopic gesticulation.
It may be simplest to say at once that the real use of the computer is not to reduce staff or costs, or to speed up or smooth out anything that has been going on. Its true function is to program and orchestrate terrestrial and galactic environments and energies in a harmonious way.
Marshall McLuhan, WAR AND PEACE IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE, 1968, pp.89-91
