Well I think this is going to be an interesting learning journey!
In reading some of the stuff about McLuhan, I am struck by how far ahead of his time he was.  I watched one of his interviews from 1965 when the reality of owning a personal computer, arguably one of the biggest 'medium' forms, was still twenty years away, and somehow he knew what was going to happen. See:
Marshall McLuhan predicts world connectivity in 1965. What a mind!

I struggled though with understanding a lot of other things he said, and with his choice of 'hot' and 'cold' to describe various media.  His choice of 'labels' is the opposite of my natural way of thinking.  I would naturally assume that if a medium is hot it requires more engagement and effort, while if it is cool it means one could be more detached or less connected.  So I am having trouble reconciling these in my mind.  I have to exert considerable cognitive effort to 'flip' them in my mind when I think about these labels and what they mean. I am also struggling with television as a cool medium.  Personally I feel much less engaged with television than I do with a book.  

I wondered if some of the new technologies (twitter, blogs, facebook) shift us toward becoming more of a "print culture' rather than an 'oral culture'?  Is the current move away from 'voice' (i.e. telephone) conversations toward online written communication changing our primary forms of communication? 

I feel like I am already being pushed to think differently. I'm looking forward to being in a class with so many diverse and interesting people. I find there's always so much richness in learning when I am challenged to recognize many of my own assumptions and biases that come from a very 'health' oriented context.  See you all soon.