Introduction. The article is devoted to the key ideas of the media theorist M. McLuhan. The Canadian culturologist and philologist conceptualized the advent of the era of a new, “electronic”, person and new electronic media. Theoretical analysis. M. McLuhan’s works, in a certain sense, shaped the direction and style of studying media in a social context, “The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man” (1951), “The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man” (1962), “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” (1964).