A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Today, when the largest commodity of all is information itself, war is no longer the movement of hardware, but of information. What had previously been ”a peace time” activity within our boundaries now becomes the major “cold-war” across frontiers. Instead of competing for the franchise and dollars of our own citizens, we are now engaged in trying to win the favorable attention of Asian and African millions for the star turn or top show. Our own conceptions of education and of warfare are so completely tied to 3,500 years of literacy that the meaning of the electronic revolution is much less obvious to us in the West than to a Japanese or a Chinese or to an African.
What I Learned on the Project (1959-60), in NAEB Report on Understanding New Media, June (1960), p 2
Year: 1959
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan