demonstrate the fertility of McLuhan’s insights for 
researchers in this sense: he offered relevant 
hypotheses, and conceptual tools for use in the 
complex task of interpreting the shaping powers of 
media environments. One need not agree with 
McLuhan in order to be inspired by him.

The most radical challenge to conventional thinking 
posed by McLuhan’s work arose from application 
to the present of the sweeping conclusion he drew 
from his diagnosis of historical patterns of 
mediamorphosis.

 “[W]e have confused reason with literacy, and