But the point was that within popular culture, for 
those particular people who were members of the 
so-called television generation, a lot of what 
McLuhan had to say made a good deal of sense. 
Difficult to understand, not straightforward, not 
the kind of thing you learn by rote, but the kind of 
thing that maybe once upon a time, really forced 
you to change your mind. I can’t tell you how many 
people I’ve run across who can actually cite to me 
the moment when they had some kind of 
breakthrough. It almost sounds like a religious 
experience, which is what terrified McLuhan’s 
critics so much. Because they thought this was 
McLuhanacy—that he was starting a whole kind of