The Technological Environment

Witness the power of technology: "the age of radio gave rise to the four most powerful political leaders of the twentieth century - Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt - each of whom used the then-new medium to address their people at crucial moments in history. At these times, their voices came into living rooms, heretofore the precinct primarily of family, and spoke via a device unable to register any contrary opinion or objection ... McLuhan caught the fleeting reign of the radio family in his oft-quoted observation (1964, p. 261) that 'had TV come first there would have been no Hitler'" (p. 67).

--Paul Levinson in Digital McLuhan, 1999.