marshall mcluhan:  understanding media pg. 27
the principle of mechanization excludes the very possibility of growth or the understanding of change. for mechanization is achieved by fragmentation of any process and by putting the fragmented parts in a series. yet, as david hume showed in the 18th century, there is no principle of causality in the mere sequence. that one thing follows another accounts for nothing. nothing follows from nothing, except change. so the greatest of all reversals occurred with electricity, that ended the sequence by making things instant. with instant speed the causes of things began to emerge to awareness again, as they had not done with things in sequence and in concatenation accordingly. instead of asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, it suddenly seemed that a chicken was an egg's idea for getting more eggs.