Marshall McLuhan, W. Terrence Gordon - Understanding Media_ the Extensions of Man_ Critical Edition-Gingko Press

The capitulation of Western man to his technology, with its crescendo of specialized demands, has always appeared to many observers of our world as a kind of enslavement

For just as a metaphor transforms and transmits experience, so do the media.

As work is replaced by the sheer movement of information, money as a store of work merges with the informational forms of credit and credit card. From coin to paper currency, and from currency to credit card there is a steady progression toward commercial exchange as the movement of information itself.

To behold, use or perceive any extension of ourselves in technological form is necessarily to embrace it.

the American Presidency has become very much more personal and monarchical than any European monarch ever could be.

how do whole communities act when conquered and enslaved? The same strategy serves them as it does the lame individual in a society of warriors. They specialize and become indispensable to their masters.

Today, when we have extended all parts of our bodies and senses by technology, we are haunted by the need for an outer consensus of technology and experience that would raise our communal lives to the level of a world-wide consensus. When we have achieved a world-wide fragmentation, it is not unnatural to think about a world-wide integration.

In cars, in clothes, in paperback books; in beards, babies, and beehive hairdos, the American has declared for stress on touch, on participation, involvement, and sculptural values.

War and the fear of war have always been considered the main incentives to technological extension of our bodies.