In this chapter I believe we need to examine three elements: the title of the chapter itself, the very opening of the chapter, and then the very closing text. For it is in consideration of these elements that McLuhan frames his discussion of clocks, time, and meaning relative to preliterate and then literate man. Concomitantly, we also need to be aware of the history of method by which the measurement of time has changed.

This article begins with the observation that in Africa “the turban, the sword and nowadays the alarm clock are worn or carried to signify high rank” (145). McLuhan adds that “it will be rather long before the African will watch the clock in order to be punctual.” The clock, in this case, is symbolic—not of time—but of person, of being, and status. The Africa of this passage is preliterate and tribal. Common to preliterate man—hence time before chronological time and the division of time represented by the clock—is a sense of time not as duration, but as the rhythm of human experience. This isn’t a suggestion of an absence of awareness of time, simply that time is measured by the “uniqueness of private experience” (146).

In the mechanical clock age, with its uniform production of time sense, time itself is separated from the rhythm of human experience resulting in the fragmentation of life. Production and the acceleration of human activities lead to “new work and wealth” (155), while duration or uniform succession is the result of the division of time. The clock develops in an age of literacy, and literacy is reinforced by the clock; abstract conceptions of time also result from this mutual reinforcement (154).

With electric technology the clock further transforms our relationship to time. Through it, we experience time not strictly in linear fashion but as plurality of activities. Our entire being is extended such that we move beyond the eye—in terms of the visual aspect of the clock–to where our central nervous system is extended into the “space-time” world of this of this technology (147).

Whereas this chapter begins in a tribal setting where time is measured in years and man of that period felt no sense of impatience with respect to duration of time, the chapter ends in a discussion of the sacred and the profane (terms developed by Mircea Eliade). For tribal man there was a cosmic clock and a sacred time of the cosmogony (155). With the advent of the mechanical clock this sacred space gives way to visual sense; sacred space gives is replaced by the profane. In the electric age, man is all embraced by time. Kelly reminds me that media are “extensions of man,” and Aden notes that McLuhan is “arguing that a clock becomes an extension of not just the eyes, but a person’s entire being.” Ultimately, the visual aspect of time is transformed into hypersensitivity of the ear, which reverberates under the pressure of this new technology.