What McLuhan would think today

McLuhan's radical ideas couldn't have been introduced at a more perfect time as it reflects a pot smoking, revolutionary rhetoric time period.

McLuhan's central thesis "the medium is the message", was that the technologies through which we take in information - the media, broadly defined - become "extensions" of our bodies, exerting a profound influence over us. When an important new medium arrives, it can reshape who we are as individuals and as a society.

The electric media of television and computers would liberate us from our dependence on the printed word. Print was what he called a "hot" medium, one that absorbed all of our attention and left little room for participation. A "cool" medium is one that left plenty of space for participation.

The internet does seem to represent the fulfillment of McLuhan's vision, at least in some ways. As we've seen with the explosion of blogs, podcasts and homemade videos, the net encourages media participation on an unprecedented scale.

But it's hard to imagine that McLuhan would be self-assured about today's "electric media". In fact, he'd probably have a hard time even recognizing them. Television, which McLuhan saw as cool medium, is rapidly turning into a hot one, with enormous screens, high-definition images and surround sound. And computers, rather than freeing us from the printed word, have made text more widespread than ever. Whether surfing the web, typing messages on our phones or checking our BlackBerrys, we are wrapped in a world of text that would have boggled McLuhan's mind.

McLuhan understood that as media become more interactive, they also become a more potent tool for control. They not only transmit information to us but gather information about us.