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About this quote

What does it mean?
Tools extend senses but disrupt overall balance.
In plain terms
New devices change how we perceive reality.
What can you take from it?
Balance new tools with sensory awareness.

Where it applies

  • design
  • daily life

Putting it to work

  • audit sensory load
  • limit screen time

Questions to consider

  • What sense is most affected by your screen?

Another view

Some disruption drives necessary innovation.

More from Marshall McLuhan

  1. With the return to simultaneity we enter the tribal and acoustic world once more. Globally. (1956)

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  2. Any technology tends to create a new human environment... Technological environments are not merely passive containers of people but are active processes that …

    Permalink to quote #53
  3. The perfection of the means of communication has given [the] average power complex of the human being an enormous extension of expression. (1953)

    Permalink to quote #50

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