Q:  McLuhan seemed to fall out of favor in the 
1970s and ’80s, but recently there has been a real 
resurgence of interest in his work. Can you put 
this re-birth into context for us?

A:  Okay, let me try this way. McLuhan’s stunning 
catapult to fame in the 1960s put the whole topic 
of media and its connection to cultural change on 
the map. That had never been done before. With 
the book Understanding Media , McLuhan put that 
subject squarely on the agenda. He took a lot of 
flak, not only because of what he had said, but 
because of what he was talking about—namely 
media. Media was a discredited subject. It was not