A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

My own approach, following Harold Innis, is a transformation theory, thus homeostasis of the perceptual factors in a rapidly changing environment requires much redistribution of emphasis among the senses. For example, a blind or deaf person compensates for the loss of one sense by a heightening of activity in the others. It seems to me that this also occurs in whole populations, when new technologies create new sensory environments.
Quoted in “McLuhan Delivers His Message,” by Bella Strumbo, Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1972; later quoted in W. Terrence Gordon’s Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding (1997), p 150
Year: 1972
↪ Also at #368, #6313, #7008
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan