A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Invading privacy, in fact, just ignoring it, everybody has become porous. They let the light and the message go right through us, by the way, at this moment, we are on the air, and on the air. We do not have any physical body. When you're on the telephone, or on the radio, or on TV, you don't have a physical body; you're just an image on the air. When you don't have a physical body; you're a discarnate being, you have a very different relation to the world around you, and this, I think, has been one of the big effects of the electric age. It has deprived people, really, of their private identity.
Marshall McLuhan in Conversation with Mike McManus”, TVO, September 19, 1977, 06:57
Year: 1977
Chapter: Discarnate
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan