Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/121

113 :Today, electronics and automation make mandatory that everybody adjust to the vast global environment as if it were his little home town. In McLuhan's view, computers and electronics are destined to enable man to treat the entire globe almost as a work of art. Writing of the computer, for example, he States:
 * Its true function is to program and orchestrate terrestrial and gaiactic environments and energies in a harmonious way.

He adds:
 * 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.

Again, there is a 'return' to the pre-literate conception of art
 * From the beginnings of literacy until now, art has mostly been thought of as representation, a kind of matching of inner and outer environments. Primitive man and post-literate man agree that art is making and that it affects the universe.

This new art-form operates on a vast scale:
 * Technological art takes the whole earth and its population as its material, not as its form.

And so a completely new role opens up for the artist:
 * The Ivory Tower becomes the Control Tower of Human Navigation.