Nate - Despite some of his ideas, I think McLuhan has uncovered something more important than he gets credit for. I know for myself, that in my lifetime alone the paradigm shift from simplistic electronics to the new huge systems and networks of computers everywhere, has definitely made the world feel like a "global village." My own attitudes have become much more humanitarian and less focused on the inevitable differences between me and other people of all types. I think McLuhan is right in saying that how we shape our tools determines how they shape us. In San Francisco I worked at a network computer company. The technology of the "hour" vastly affected how information was transferred at stores and restaurants everywhere. It also became very apparent that cellular phones, beepers, pagers, etc. were widely advocated to "make it" in the new workplace. In a lot of ways they have become inseparable.