And a mass audience is an audience in which everyone experiences and participates with everybody and in which nobody has a private identity. So the psychiatrist's couches today are groaning with the weight of people asking, "Who am I? Please tell me who I am." There is no identity left. At electric speeds nobody has a private identity.
“Television in a New Light” (1966), in The Meaning of Commercial Television: The Texas-Stanford Seminar, 1966, p 96.
Year: 1966
Chapter:
Identity
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan