Boing Boing pointed me to a remarkable site called “Marshall McLuhan Speaks: Centennial 2011,” which celebrates what would have been the media philosopher’s 100th birthday. It contains clips of McLuhan opining about things he saw on the horizon that others didn’t. It’s amazing to think how celebrated and discredited McLuhan was in such short order during the ’60s and ’70s, but I think his ideas are mostly a good legacy. A transcript of McLuhan’s words from 1966, describing what sounds very much like the Internet:

“Instead of going out and buying a packaged book of which there have been 5,000 copies printed, you will go to the telephone, describe your interests, your needs, your problems, and they at once xerox, with the help of computers from the libraries of the world, all the latest material just for you personally, not as something to be put out on a bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service. This is where we’re heading under electronic information conditions.”

More Afflictor posts about Marshall McLuhan:

• McLuhan on Facebook (1967)
• McLuhan on genocide in America (1969)