A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Gramophone and movies were merely the mechanization of speech and gesture. But the radio and TV were not just the electronification of speech and gesture but the electronification of the entire range of human personal expressiveness. With electronification the flow is taken out of the wire and into the vacuum tube circuit, which confers freedom and flexibility such as are in metaphor and in words themselves.
“A Historical Approach to the Media” (1955), reprinted in reprinted from Teachers College Record, Vol 57, No. 2, November 1955, p 109-110
Year: 1955
↪ Also at #1902, #1932
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan