In Electric Language Eric McLuhan takes as a starting point his father’s premise that the monopoly print has held as the main mode of communication since the 15th century is fading and, in its place, a new language based on the speed and compact nature of digital information transmissions is emerging. “The computer screen,” writes the younger McLuhan, “has no more use for [print] literacy than does the television screen: the alphabet belongs to an earlier and slower medium.” He argues that the culture created by digital image-based media, the conduits of the electric language, are transforming an outward looking civilization preoccupied with “fixity, identity, stability, and responsibility – of the old-fashioned…type – into an inward looking populace: While the outer world is rendered fantastic and unreal, the inward fantasy world is rendered real,” he writes, repeatedly pointing to the fact that Internet Netizens, as they are called, have taken to using the acronym RL when talking about “Real Life.”

Perhaps the most interesting facet of the book is the unconventional way its pages are laid out. Using the magazine-design techniques pioneered by Wired and Raygun, the pages are often more entertaining to look at than to read. While some readers will undoubtedly find the eclectic use of colours, fonts, and formats distracting, anyone at least familiar with electric language should find the images complementary to the text.

To comprehend this book, however, it’s necessary for the reader to already have an understanding of Marshall McLuhan. So, while Eric McLuhan explains an idea like the Tetrad (he helped his father develop this concept in The Laws of Media, which they penned together), other ideas, like understanding “in depth,” are taken as common knowledge. One has to be particularly familiar with the elder McLuhan’s style of writing to understand Electric Language. Marshall McLuhan’s prose is often compared to James Joyce’s – not necessarily a compliment when talking about non-fiction. Eric McLuhan’s writing is even more cryptic, but unlike his father’s, his is often awkward. Readers looking to understand Electric Language, are better off starting with Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media.