being a success as a teacher. McLuhan was particularly annoyed at the common habit of making moral statements—“Television is being abused by advertisers!”—in lieu of actually trying to understand a situation. Moral indignation, he was fond of saying, is a technique for endowing the idiot with dignity. And, he might have added, it has little to do with actual morality.

Reappraisal & Revival

In a censorious age such as our own, this wisdom of McLuhan’s has gone unremarked. For many years, in fact, the name of McLuhan appeared in print almost solely in connection with his phrase “global village” as if this were his only legacy. Now however, his reputation is on the rise again. The popular high-tech magazine WiredÑthe most