The New Nomads

The most disadvantaged part of our culture is the suburbs--the rich suburbs--because these are the people who have plunged into the most primitive modes of awareness, thanks to electronics and thanks to the latest in everything. In other words the suburbs are more in contact with the 20th century than any other part of our culture and they are therefore the most primitive in the sense of Paleolithic hunter-oriented man.

The Wilderness Downtown

In educational terms you have this paradox: that the most economically advantaged part of our community is the most disadvantaged culturally in terms of the sensory life. Now these people are in trouble. They are torn because they want to belong to the establishment--in fact they think of it as theirs--and yet they are, in terms of their new century involvement in the electric age, so deeply involved that their capacities for establishing contact with the visual world of rational order and visual connectives, their capacities for making that adjustment are just about zero.

--Marshall McLuhan, Education in the Electronic Age, 

in The Best of Times/The Worst of Times: 

Contemporary Issues in Canadian Education, 1970