Guys like McLuhan can have insights that take a generation or two to be realized. (I�m reading up on him for research I�m doing on brands.) In the late 60�s McLuhan visited Walter Landor, the guru of brands and packaging, and told him: �"Of course, packages will be obsolete in a few years. People will want tactile experiences. They'll want to feel the product they're getting.� And today we have industrial design, where the look and feel of the product itself is critical, with the package an expression of the product. Steve Jobs owes a bit to McLuhan, too.
McLuhan also said to Landor that in the future people won�t want packaging and store shelves�-they will buy their goods from bins. This seems to presage Costco and Wal-Mart, and the open retail displays of Gap, et. al., where half the stuff is on tables.
In a sense, online retail is a �bin� too. When I buy stuff at Amazon, etc. I am picking through a virtual bin on my computer screen.
McLuhan was connecting dots before the ink was dry. That is no small talent.
Hello Noah,
Actually, it's Mahashunyam, a friend of Umair. Thanks for pointing to McLuhan Unbound, it seems interesting : I'll check it out.
Brian,
Yup, McLuhan was so far ahead of his time. I can think of few visionaries who were similarly gifted - may be Philip K.Dick or another fellow Canuck Gibson would seem to come close.
