Hence he starts considering humanity around 5,000 years ago in a sequential presentation of various inventions one after another in chronological order. We have to get some detail on his theory and, to remain in our own logic, consider it in a phylogenic perspective though Marshall McLuhan does not envisage any other human phase before the invention of writing systems (even his short chapter on “The Spoken Word” is entirely oriented towards writing systems). We will concentrate on his 1964 book Understanding Media, The extensions of Man. Marshall McLuhan is essential here because he deals with the media and not the machines, or rather with all inventions, mechanical or not, starting with oral language, considered as media all of them extending man’s body, body parts, central nervous system and even “consciousness” as he calls the mind.
This review is the prolongation of a long study that dealt with, among other topics but essentially, Ray Kurzweil’s “popular-science”-fiction wrapped up as MIT expertise.
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