The Medium is the Massage remains Marshall McLuhan’s most popular book, perhaps as influential as Understanding Media. It is still one of the most insightful and provocative works ever to have been published on our modern culture. With every technological advance, McLuhan’s theories reveal how prescient his insights actually proved to be. His thought is a guide to understanding “environments”, especially new ones as they enter and pervade society. Marshall McLuhan’s books are published in more than a dozen languages. He is widely considered to be the most original thinker of the twentieth century.
In 1967 McLuhan wrote in The Medium is the Massage:
“Electrical Information Devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community’s need to know”.
“Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old”