Marshall McLuhan, W. Terrence Gordon - Understanding Media_ the Extensions of Man_ Critical Edition-Gingko Press

Pope Pius XII was deeply concerned that there be serious study of the media today. On February 17, 1950, he said: It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of

Oral cultures act and react at the same time. Phonetic culture endows men with the means of repressing their feelings and emotions when engaged in action.

Housing was an image of both the body and the universe for tribal and nonliterate societies.

men are never aware of the ground rules of their environmental systems or cultures. Today technologies and their consequent environments succeed each other so rapidly that one environment makes us aware of the next.

For just as a metaphor transforms and transmits experience, so do the media.

The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs.

technical change alters not only habits of life, but patterns of thought and valuation,

Electromagnetic technology requires utter human docility and quiescence of meditation such as befits an organism that now wears its brain outside its skull and its nerves outside its hide.

The square room or house speaks the language of the sedentary specialist, while the round hut or igloo, like the conical wigwam, tells of the integral nomadic ways of food-gathering communities.

the invention of Euclidean space is, itself, a direct result of the action of the phonetic alphabet on the human senses.