McLuhan in an Age of Social Media

This essay can be considered a new chapter in my book Digital McLuhan, published in 1999, or before the advent of X/Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the social media of our age. Marshall McLuhan's ideas, including hot and cool, the medium is the message, and the tetrad, are applied to help us understand selfies, tweeting, fake news, iconic television shows such as The Sorpanos and Mad Men, the advent of streaming television and binge watching, the Arab Spring, the U.S. Presidential elections of 2016, 2020, and 2024, and the Kindle revolution itself.