The conception - day gift includes a means of storing information (memory) and of transmitting information (speech). Memory & Speech could thus be considered as a first generation of media. However, natural selection can explain our evolution only to a hunter - gatherer society. How have we managed the transitions over historical time to an agricultural, an industrial, and now an information society? We have learned how to extend our nervous systems by storing information (Print & Film - second generation), by transmitting information (Telephone & Television - third generation), and by both storing and transmitting information outside our bodies (Multimedia & Internet - fourth generation).A History of Media tells this story of the co-evolution of the person and media as extensions.
This long perspective will help us better understand our turbulent transitional times as we assimilate the fourth generation of media. This third transition will be clarified by analogy with the first and second transitions as we assimilated the second and third generations of media. The work of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and their successors in the Toronto School of Media Studies will help illuminate those transitions.