that you can look at almost any social institution 
and put that question at the centre of it. And I 
think I’ve done that in every book I’ve written. 
Certainly, it was right from the first, because the 
first book I wrote was for the National Council of 
Teachers of English, and it was about television—it 
was called Television and the Teaching of English . 
And I know I couldn’t have written that book if I 
hadn’t known about McLuhan. So far as I’m 
concerned, my career as a writer and teacher and 
social critic, has been dependent on McLuhan, 
what I call McLuhan’s question. Now I should add 
that it’s not that others, let’s say Louis Mumford 
for example, didn’t ask this question before