[from postulates that help understand Marshall
McLuhan:]
Life imitates art. We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.
These extensions of our senses begin to interact with our senses. These
media become a massage. The new change in the environment creates a new
balance among the senses. No sense operates in isolation. The full
sensorium seeks fulfillment in almost every sense experience. And since
there is a limited quantum of energy available for any sensory
experience, the sense-ratio will differ for different media....
We shaped the alphabet and it shaped us... And once a culture uses
such a medium [print] for a few centuries, it begins to perceive the
world in a one-thing-at-a-time, abstract, linear, fragmented, sequential
way. And it shapes its organizations and schools according to the same
premises. The form of print has become the form of thought. The medium
has become the message.