Marshall McLuhan was an educator and theorist who lived from 1911-1980, famed for his psychological and doxological approach to media and communications studies.Called the “Oracle of the Electronic Age” and best-known for his aphorism-turned-bestselling book, “The Medium is the Massage”, McLuhan was an outspoken and scholarly guru of media culture.
As director for the Center for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, popular standards acclaimed him while academic circles dismissed him. Gary Wolf, writing for Wired magazine, called him a “critic and an academic rebel”. As such, McLuhan was prone to incredible pronouncements and humorous, insightful quips.
McLuhan’s bestselling book took on the world with his position that any message is forever impacted by its system of delivery; it doesn’t matter ‘what’ you say – the importance is in ‘how’ you deliver the message. McLuhan’s belief in technological determinism is clear in his phrase, “we shape our tools and they in turn shape us”.
He is also well known for his theories about “hot and cool media”. In his 1964 book, “Understanding Media”, McLuhan proposed that different media invite different degrees of participation from the person who chooses to consume a media.
McLuhan was also famous for his claim that the Industrial Revolution began with Gutenberg’s printing press. He linked the fragmentation of society with the invention of the printed word, claiming that readers now read in private and disconnect themselves from society in this way.
Conversely, McLuhan viewed electronic media as a return to achieving collective perceptions of the world. His theory of “global village” asserted the ability of electronic media to “unify and retribalize” the human race. What he did not live to see, but seems to have foretold, is the modern-day melding of traditional text with electronic mass media that we now call the Internet.
Regent University McLuhan bio - http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/rojc/mdic/mcluhan.html
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McLuhan bio by Phillip Marchand - http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/marchand.html
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Wikipedia McLuhan entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
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