McLuhan

"After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man - the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media." Understanding Media 1964, McLuhan

He is famous for his soundbites, add some more soundbites to the McLuhan Probe Page

Some cool graphical versions of probes probes

Some McLuhan links can be found here, bring their insights back into the wiki McLuhan links

McLuhan made a model later in his books that he descibed in laws of media. It is called the tetrad and you use it to think about the effects of technology: