读麦讲演在光速下生活（1974）001

　　One of the big flips that’s taking place in our time is the changeover from the eye to the ear. Most of us, having grown up in the visual world, are now suddenly confronted with the problems of living in an acoustic world which is, in effect, a world of simultaneous information. The visual world has very peculiar properties, and the acoustic world has quite different properties. The visual world which belongs to the old nineteenth century, and which had been around for quite a while—say from the sixteenth century, anyway—the visual world has the properties of being sort of continuous and connected and homogeneous, all parts more or less alike and static. Things stayed put. If you had a point of view, that stayed put. The acoustic world, which is the electric world of simultaneity, has no continuity, no homogeneity, no connections, and no stasis. Everything is changing. So that’s quite a big shift. I mean, to move from one of those worlds to the other is a very big shift. It’s the same shift that Alice in Wonderland made when she went through the looking glass. She moved out of the visual world and into the acoustic world when she went through the looking glass.
　　我们这个时代发生的重大转变之一就是从眼睛到耳朵的转换。我们当中的大多数人，在视觉世界中长大，现在突然面临在一个听觉世界——实际上这是一个由同步信息构成的世界——中生活的问题。视觉世界有着非常独特的属性，而听觉世界具有与此迥异的属性。视觉世界属于过去的19世纪因而已经存在了很长一段时间——比方说至少是从16世纪开始的——视觉世界有几分连续性、连接性和同质性，各个部分或多或少是一样的、静态的。事物如如不动。假如你有了一个观点，这观点就固定不变。听觉世界即同步状态的电子世界，没有连续性，没有同质性，没有连接也没有静态。一切都在变化。因此这是一个极大的转变。我的意思是，从那些世界当中之一转进另一个世界是一种极大的转变。这和艾丽丝穿过镜子进入仙境时所作的是同样的转变。她穿过那面镜子的时候，她出离了视觉世界，进入到听觉世界。
　　按： 听觉世界实际上是一个由同步信息构成的世界，即同步状态的世界。古时有由语音同步信息构造的话语世界即语音整体场，当下则是由电子同步信息构造的电子世界即电子整体场。
　　静态是视觉世界的显著特征，连思想方法也讲求静态，观点固定，目标固定。视觉人既不能理解也不能接受目标随时切换。
　　《艾丽丝梦游仙境》描述的是出离视觉世界、转进听觉世界。