Apropos the right to life, I don’t think I need to stress that when people become group-oriented and have lost their private identities, it is not easy to convince them about the right to individual or private life. People without identity are not easily convinced that private identity means anything. Mass, or electronic, man is not concerned about the private right to life. That indifference is the new hidden ground that we’re all up against, suddenly flipping over into a tribal society which has much concern with the group and very little concern with the private individual. In the world of the databank and social services, the individual becomes a statistic. He is part of a computerized program, and his private identity is meaningless. He is a replaceable bit in a computer programme. That is the world we have created.”
Marshall McLuhan, 1977, unpublished statement on the abortion question
