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McLuhan's media history
Marshall McLuhan defined media as anything requiring use of the human body. Under this definition both computers and clothing can be identified as media. When a media is introduced it is adapted to human senses so that it becomes an extension of the individual and its capabilities influence the whole of society, leading to change. McLuhan has stated that there are three inventions that transformed the world: the phonetic alphabet, by virtue of its ability to make speech visible, gave rise to the discipline of rhetoric in ancient time, and to the study of language and poetics, which was also known as grammar. In the nineteenth century, the printing press, and the telegraph led to both the modern newspaper and also to journalism as an academic pursuit. The introduction of broadcasting in the form of radio, following on the heels of mass circulation newspapers, magazines, as well as the movies, resulted in the study of mass communication. Due to these technologies, the world was taken from one era into the next. In order to understand the effects of symbolic environment, McLuhan split history into four periods: the tribal age, the literary age, the print age, and the electronic age (information age).

McLuhan stated that in order to study media effectively one must study not only content but also the whole cultural environment in which media thrives. He believed that using a detached view allows the individual to observe the phenomenon of the whole as it operates within the environment. The effects of media - speech, writing, printing, photograph, radio or television – should be studied within the social and cultural spheres impacted by this technology. McLuhan argued that that all media, regardless of content, acts on the senses and reshapes sensory balance, further reshaping the society that created it. This differed from the viewpoints of scholars such as Neil Postman, who argued that society should take a moral view of new media whether good or bad. McLuhan further noted that media introduced in the past brought gradual changes, which allowed people and society some time to get used to it.