In the 1960’s, long before anybody ever updated their Facebook page, posted their whereabouts on Twitter, uploaded images on Youtube, or exposed government secrets on WikiLeaks, one man made a series of pronouncements about the changing media landscape that resonate with the internet world we live in today.<br /><br />You may have never heard of Marshall McLuhan, but you have probably heard his most widely quoted dictum: "The medium is the message."<br /><br />McLuhan was writing about the effects of the mass media on contemporary life and he was talking mostly about television. But his ideas had something of the prophetic – because in the tumult of today’s digital revolution, a lot of what McLuhan said has even more relevance now than it did then.<br /><br />In this edition of the Listening Post, we look at how to read today’s media landscape, with the help of McLuhan, speaking to us 50 years ago.
