 Biographer John Watson notes that Innis 's work was profoundly political while McLuhan 's was not . He writes that " the mechanization of knowledge , not the relative sensual bias of media , is the key to Innis 's work . This also <unk> the <unk> of Innis 's position vis @-@ a @-@ vis that of McLuhan . " Watson adds that Innis believed very different media could produce similar effects . " For Innis , the yellow press of the United States and the Nazi loudspeaker had the same form of negative effect : they reduced men from thinking beings to mere automatons in a chain of command . " Watson argues that while McLuhan separated media according to their sensory bias , Innis examined a different set of interrelationships , the " dialectic of power and knowledge " in specific historical circumstances . For Watson , Innis 's work is therefore more flexible and less <unk> than McLuhan 's . 
