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Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, scholar, academic, professor of English literature, communications theorist and one of the founders of modern media studies.Born in Edmonton, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba and Cambridge University, where he was a student of I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis. In 1936-37 he taught at the University of Wisconsin and from 1937 to 1944 at Saint Louis University. In 1939 he married Corinne Lewis of Fort Worth, Texas, and they spent 1939-40 at Cambridge University, where he continued to work on his dissertation on Thomas Nashe and the verbal arts. From 1946 to 1979 he taught at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto.
McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man is a pioneering study of the artifacts of popular culture.
McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man is a pioneering study of print culture -- and indeed a pioneering study in cultural studies.
His most widely known work is Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In it McLuhan proposes that media itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study -- popularly quoted as the medium is the message. More controversially, he postulates that content had little effect on society -- in other words, it did not matter if television broadcast children's shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example -- the effect of television on society would be identical. He notes that all media had characteristics that engaged the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but (at least until the advent of the videocassette) a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it.
McLuhan generally divides media into hot (content-rich) and cool (content-poor). Today this could be demonstrated by comparing a high-speed Internet connection (hot) with a dial-up connection (cold). Despite the content available being identical (if often more difficult to access by dial-up users), the surfing habits of those connected at high-speed are usually very different.
Recognizing his lasting global influence for his pioneering work on the study of media, the government of Canada honoured him with his image on a postage stamp in 2000 (right).
In 1970 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Bibliography
- 1951 The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (Vanguard Press)
- 1962 The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press)
- 1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McGraw-Hill)
- 1967 The Medium is the Message (Random House; 2000 reprint by Gingko)
External links
- UbuWeb Marshall McLuhan featuring the LP The Medium is the Message
- Official Site
- Marshall McLuhan, the Man and his Message (CBC Archives)
- McLuhan global research network Jeffrey's McLuhan bibliography free online
- Terry Mockler's Journey Through Cyberspace