I was surprised to learn from a review of Coupland's recent biography (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115029 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115029)

I was surprised to learn from a review of Coupland's recent biography (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115029 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2115029) that McLuhan largely deplored the social changes he was writing about. "Anything I talk about is almost certain to be something I'm resolutely against, and it seems to me the best way of opposing it is to understand it, and then you know where to turn off the button." The popular image of McLuhan (and he was extremely popular - up there with rock stars) was definitely not that of a button-turner-offer. Such a mindset in many critics would make them predictable and boring, but to me it makes McLuhan more interesting. The knock against him was always that he was glib, but this suggests a depth that isn't obvious. I remember hearing that McLuhan was once at an academic conference where some professor excoriated him after his talk (McLuhan was loathed by his fellow academics). McLuhan shrugged and said, "You don't like these ideas? I got others."