Alan Jacobs


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‘Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it,’ McLuhan explained during an uncharacteristically candid interview in 1966. 'The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certain to be something I’m resolutely against, and it seems to me the best way of opposing it is to understand it, and then you know where to turn off the button.’ Though the founders of Wired magazine would posthumously appoint McLuhan as the 'patron saint’ of the digital revolution, the real McLuhan was more a Luddite than a technophile. He would have found the collective banality of Facebook and other social networks abhorrent, if also fascinating.