I tend to find his work much more insightful and broadly applicable than Kevin Kelly, et al.
His ideas reproduced in _The Medium is the Massage_ are the most popular, but my favorite is the concept of the media tetrad because it tends towards the descriptive, instead of the prescriptive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects
Taking Twitter for example, instead of saying "Twitter has foo effect on society", McLuhan's tetrad provides a framework for discussion and analysis. e.g., Perhaps you think Twitter retrieves the telegraph, maybe you don't, but McLuhan provides an easy method for discussion.
Says McLuhan Biographer, W. Terrence Gordon:
"by the time it appeared in 1967, McLuhan no doubt recognized that his original saying had become a cliché and welcomed the opportunity to throw it back on the compost heap of language to recycle and revitalize it. But the new title is more than McLuhan indulging his insatiable taste for puns, more than a clever fusion of self-mockery and self-rescue — the subtitle is 'An Inventory of Effects,' underscoring the lesson compressed into the original saying."
I tend to find his work much more insightful and broadly applicable than Kevin Kelly, et al.
His ideas reproduced in _The Medium is the Massage_ are the most popular, but my favorite is the concept of the media tetrad because it tends towards the descriptive, instead of the prescriptive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects
Taking Twitter for example, instead of saying "Twitter has foo effect on society", McLuhan's tetrad provides a framework for discussion and analysis. e.g., Perhaps you think Twitter retrieves the telegraph, maybe you don't, but McLuhan provides an easy method for discussion.