Much of what Eric McLuhan says about the social effects of the Internet -- and much of what his father, Marshall McLuhan, said before him regarding the social effects of electronic media and computers -- challenge some of our most basic assumptions about the fundamentals of democratic society.

Like his father, Eric McLuhan talks about many of the social effects of new media as if they already have happened. Indeed, a fundamental premise of the McLuhan perspective is that new technologies and new media create hidden environments whose social effects are generally not seen by most people until superseded by a new medium or a new technology. Hence, what we become sharply aware of are the effects of the old media rather than the new.