 Innis also tried to defend universities from political and economic pressures . He believed that independent universities , as centres of critical thought , were essential to the survival of Western civilization . His intellectual disciple and university colleague , Marshall McLuhan , lamented Innis 's premature death as a disastrous loss for human understanding . McLuhan wrote : " I am pleased to think of my own book The <unk> Galaxy as a footnote to the observations of Innis on the subject of the psychic and social consequences , first of writing then of printing . " 
