A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Our sensory modes are constituents, not classifications. I am simply identifying modes of experience. We need new perceptions to cope. Our technologies are generations ahead of our thinking. If you even begin to think about these new technologies you appear as a poet because you are dealing with the present as the future. That is my technique. Most people look back for security. Much greater perceptions and energies are needed than simply mine in the world in which we exist. Better developed talents are needed. James Joyce had these talents in a much more refined state. Joyce had a complete ecology of manmade environments which these critics should have read and studied long ago.
“The Hot and Cool Interview”, in Essays Media Research Technology, Art, Communication, p 78
Chapter: Perception
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan