People

McLuhan references the following people as having a good understanding of media.

Non-Fiction Writers

 * Carothers, J. C. is a psychiatrist who wrote about the traumatic effects of detribalization in The African Mind in Health and Disease.
 * De Tocqueville wrote about how print affected France, England, and the United States differently.
 * Marx understood the effects of technology on society, but he analyzed it in terms of machines just as the telegraph was changing the dynamic from mechanical to electric.
 * Mumford, Lewis wrote in The City in History that not only are clothing and housing extensions of our skins, but walled cities are as well.

Fiction Writers
Artists tend to have a much easier time understanding media, because they are particularly aware of changes in sense perception. Therefore, it is not surprising to find many many insights into media in fiction writers.


 * Blake wrote in Jerusalem about amputation of faculties into extensions.
 * Forster, E.M. wrote A Passage to India focused on the incompatibility of "oral and intuitive oriental culture" and "rational, visual European patterns of experience."
 * Joyce, James wrote Finnegan's Wake in reference to mankind's re-entry into a tribal state, but with a greater awareness of the process.
 * Lewis, Wyndham wrote a group of novels, The Human Age, which address how electric media intermingle nonliterate, semiliterate, and postliterate culture.
 * Shakespeare referenced the effects of media in many of his plays.
 * Synge, J. M. wrote Playboy of the Western World, a play about how media bear some of the responsibility for violent crime because of the role they play in psychological formation.

Non-Writers

 * Napoleon understood the effects of gunpowder, the telegraph, and newspapers on war.
 * Pope Pius XII commented on the importance of the role of "techniques of communication" on "the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life."
 * Coolidge was cool in the media sense, whereas FDR was hot.

Unattributed Works

 * The Greek myth of Narcissus communicates the idea of numbness to extensions of man.
 * Psalm 115 refers to the effects of media on the people who use them.