This work brings together in one volume key writings by Marshall McLuhan, the influential guru of the mass media. Today, in a communications environment transformed by the rapid spread of electronic media, McLuhan's insights have become more applicable than when he first announced them in the 1960s. Many in this generation are turning to his work to understand a global village made real by the coming of the information superhighway.

This text investigates some of the most fundamental effects of electric technology that change the human spirit: particularly information overload and our strategies for inhibiting that onslaught. It shows how technical complexity consistently devours simple realities and thus erodes meaning.