The media themselves are the avant-garde of our society. Avant-garde no longer exists in painting, music and poetry, it's the media themselves. - Marshall McLuhan

Literate man, civilized man, tends to restrict and to separate functions, whereas tribal man has freely extended the form of his body to include the universe. (p. 117)

With the arrival of electric technology, man has extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism.

All media exists to invest our lives with artificial perception and arbitrary values. (p. 199)