Cavemen and the City as Classroom

Marshall McLuhan spoke of how electronic technology retrieved the media environment of tribal society. Among the most salient implications of the shift: the emergence of the information hunter-gatherer as the person most adapted to survival. This was one reason why McLuhan argued that why lecture-based education is obsolete--we should instead lead students in engaging their surroundings, "probing and exploring . . . for clues to the nature of the times they lived in, seeing worlds of significance in street lamps and automobiles."

Forty years later the academic mainstream is finally catching up. Neuroanthropology has the scoop on the latest re Cavemen in the Classroom.