McLuhan Medium

This reading had various pro cons in my opinion. I felt that McLuhan's article should have been structured chronologically when taking about the significance of technology, to help give the reader a clearer understanding. For this reason I felt his article was all over the place; one moment he's talking about breaking the sound barrier and technology's similar speed in progression and, in the next moment McLuhan's connecting Shakespeare with technology. It was difficult to make such leaps, but I appreciated some of his examples, especially the airplane breaking the sound barrier. Another issue for me was that McLuhan emphasizes how quickly technology takes us into the future, but then equates it to natural resources such as coal and oil; i understand his point in saying technology today is just as essential as these basic natural resources, but it is also somewhat contradictory at the same time for me. Sure we need technology just as much as gas nowadays but their "content"(or medium or w/e the hell he's talking about) is completely different and I don't think that can be completely disregarded. Technology is definitely an extension of the self, but I believe we still don't entirely even know who we are, or how or why we are here for that matter. I believe this ambiguity is what allows McLuhan to say it doesn't matter whether electric light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball games, but having so much emphasis on the medium is really detrimental to the "big picture" in my opinion (and I'm all about the big picture.) Also, I understand how influential cinema was in McLuhan's opinion, but, don't photography, or the telephone for that matter, equally posses whatever "magnificent powers" McLuhan attributed to cinema?