Marshall McLuhan Quotes

Every time a new technology comes along, we feel we're about to break through to a place where we will not be able to recover. The advent of broadcast radio confused people. It delighted people, of course, but it also changed the world.

There's been resistance to every new technology that's ever been introduced. When books came out hundreds of years ago, there were complaints that it would destroy the oral tradition. Some of those fears were justified, but it didn't stop the rise of the written word. And books have proven to be incredibly useful.

All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations

As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of 'do it yourself.'

Curiously, once technology gets boring, the social effects get interesting.

History is littered with great firms that got killed by disruption. Of course, the personal computer, a technology that first took root as a toy, got Digital Equipment Corporation. Kodak missed the boat for a long time on digital imaging. Sony was slow to get MP3 technology. Microsoft doesn't know what to do with open source software. And so on.

Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.

I went from rotary phone to Twitter. And was appalled at the notion.

Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with.

The rapid proliferation of cell phones in Afghanistan proves that anything that adds value to people's lives spreads like brushfire - and commerce is certainly a force that could add value for Afghanis.

Everybody thinks that when new technologies come along that they're transparent and you can just do your job well on it. But technologies always import a whole new set of values with them.

Whenever teenage girls and corporate CEOs covet the same new technology, something extraordinary is happening.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it's like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

Those inevitable dreams where you can't get your column in, you know, and at first they were the Xerox telecopy, and then they were the fax machine, and then they were, you know, email. The anxiety remains the same, but the technology has changed.

Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.

We humans have a love-hate relationship with our technology. We love each new advance and we hate how fast our world is changing... The robots really embody that love-hate relationship we have with technology.

The fear of the never-ending onslaught of gizmos and gadgets is nothing new. The radio, the telephone, Facebook - each of these inventions changed the world. Each of them scared the heck out of an older generation. And each of them was invented by people who were in their 20s.

Change creates fear, and technology creates change. Sadly, most people don't behave very well when they are afraid.

Unsurprisingly, the most vocal opponents of new technologies are those who dominated the old.

Luddism is no longer with us, but today we seem to be overtaken by its opposite, the inevitability of technological change coupled with the blind belief in capitalism's ability to provide us with all we need.

Technology has become our culture

In the information age, when tradition, propriety, formality or culture clash with informational ease and utility, the traditional forms must … yield.

The technological transformation of society contains within itself the dynamo of its own management, but only if we create laws and regulations to permit the information revolution to wash through our democratic structures.

The world changes fast, and a lot of the old country folks have a hard time keeping up with it, and it makes them sad.