A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Many educators think that the problem in education is just to get the information through, get it past the barrier, the opposition of the young, just to move it and keep it going. I don’t have much interest in that theory. My theory or concern is what these media do to the people who use them. What did writing do to the people who invented it and used it? What do the other media of our time do to the people who use them? Mine is a transformation theory, how people are changed by the instruments they employ. I wish there were a lot more people in this field of transformation, but there are extremely few, and I would be embarrassed to mention more than two or three.
“Living in an Acoustic World,” Speech at the University of Florida, 1974, Transcript: 14:00
Year: 1974
Chapter: Teaching
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan