 Marshall McLuhan was a colleague of Innis 's at the University of Toronto . As a young English professor , McLuhan was flattered when he learned that Innis had put his book The Mechanical Bride on the reading list of the fourth @-@ year economics course . McLuhan built on Innis 's idea that in studying the effects of communications media , technological form <unk> more than content . Biographer Paul <unk> writes that Innis 's concept of the " bias " of a particular medium of communication can be seen as a " less flamboyant precursor to McLuhan 's legendary phrase ' the medium is the message . ' " Innis , for example , tried to show how printed media such as books or newspapers were " biased " toward control over space and secular power , while engraved media such as stone or clay tablets were " biased " in favour of continuity in time and metaphysical or religious knowledge . McLuhan focused on what may be called a medium 's " sensory bias " arguing , for example , that books and newspapers appealed to the rationality of the eye , while radio played to the <unk> of the ear . The differences in the <unk> and <unk> approaches were summarized by the late James W. Carey : 
