As much as an intellectual can, Marshall McLuhan caused a stir when he proposed that "the medium is the message" in Understanding Media (1964), the thorough analysis of media--not its content but media itself and its effects on how we think and act and make culture. It's a big, heavy subject, and McLuhan chips away at it on a great many fronts. Too many. For me, Understanding Media reads like a brilliant, nearly consumed man's mind dump rather than an organized argument. Gets tiresome.
Not to mention that often terrible writing style so prominent in the 1960's when authors of all stripes employed a scientific-ish vocabulary, needlessly obscuring their ideas in the bid for legitimacy. (Lots still do this!) For example: "Clothing, as an extension of the skin, can be seen both as a heat-control mechanism and as a means of defining the self socially" (chapter 12). But sometimes one of McLuhan's many crackerjack wisdoms splash water on your face, like this gem: "Language extends and amplifies man but it also divides his faculties. His collective consciousness or intuitive awareness is diminished by this technical extension of consciousness that is speech" (chapter 8).
