When Marshall McLuhan first coined the phrases global village and the medium is the message in 1964, no-one could have predicted todays information-dependent planet. No-one, that is, except for a handful of science fiction writers and Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media was written twenty years before the PC revolution and thirty years before the rise of the Internet. Yet McLuhans insights into our engagement with a variety of media led to a complete rethinking of our entire society. He believed that the message of electronic media foretold the end of humanity as it was known. In 1964, this looked like the paranoid babblings of a madman. In our 21st century digital world, the madman looks quite sane. Understanding Media : the most important book ever written on communication. Ignore its message at your peril.