War as education/education as war

According to McLuhan, war is closely linked to civilization, as communicative proficiency depends on rapidity, secrecy and accuracy. This is why war and peace are mutually connected to the reliability of private information. To the fore is the transition from the medieval solitary knight to the contemporary well-equipped soldier, as McLuhan emphasizes in the first half of the book, to analyze the impact of technologies on the Machiavellian Art of War. In this sense, McLuhan dwells on “clothing as weaponry” (p. 22), on “the stirrup as a way up in the world” (p. 26) and especially on “the invention of gunpowder” (p. 34), in order to highlight the central role played by human cleverness in the management of conflicts, including the wheel and the computer, “by all odds the most extraordinary of all the technological clothing ever devised by man, since it is the extension of our central nervous system. Beside it, the wheel is a mere hula-hoop, though that is not to be dismissed entirely” (p. 35).