Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan - 1911-1980

Philosopher

Born Edmonton, Canada on July 21, 1911 in Edmonton, Alberta. "I think of western skies as one of the most beautiful things about the West, and the western horizons," he once said. "The westerner doesn’t have a point of view. He has a vast panorama…a total field of vision."

A highly original thinker who in the 1950s and 1960s (he became a full professor in 1952) basically pioneered Media Studies through his focus not on the content, but on the nature of media themselves. Philip Marchand noted in his excellent biography of McLuhan that the seminal thinking was evident in the 1953-1959 publication: Explorations. "Aided by a Ford Foundation grant, McLuhan and a few collaborators, notably the anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, produced a periodical entitled Explorations—consisting of eight issues, from 1953 to 1957— laying out these perceptions. The articles by McLuhan in this periodical remain the best introduction to his work."

His most famous slogan: The Medium is the Message contains an enduring truth. A second major idea of his was that certain media are naturally "hot" (radio for example) while others are cooler and more engaging. He cited Kennedy as being ideal for the cool television age, compared to the more aggressive Nixon: a candidate who belonged to the radio era that was passing by 1960.

His early study was in theology and literature, but gradually he became fascinated (under the influence of academic mentor Harold Innes) in the role of media in society.

"For many years, until I wrote my first book, The Mechanical Bride, I adopted an extremely moralistic approach to all environmental technology. I loathed machinery, I abominated cities, I equated the Industrial Revolution with original sin and mass media with the Fall. In short, I rejected almost every element of modern life in favor of a Rousseauvian utopianism. But gradually I perceived how sterile and useless this attitude was, and I began to realize that the greatest artists of the 20th Century--Yeats, Pound. Joyce, Eliot--had discovered a totally different approach, based on the identity of the processes of cognition and creation. I realized that artistic creation is the playback of ordinary experience--from trash to treasures. I ceased being a moralist and became a student." ( Interview - March 1969)

Prescient, McLuhan saw the arrival of the global village - and the nature of the planet as being an extension of the brain - a wired, interconnected community of thought: which is a pretty good definition of the internet.

Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. - Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964.

Like many Canadian intellectuals, he combined a literary sensibility and was, like his contemporary John Kenneth Galbraith, highly provocative, entertaining and quotable. (See link below.) He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1964. He became a major figure in the gogo pop-culture of the 60’s (he appeared with the likes of John Lennon, and later in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall) but in the 21st Century a reappraisal of his work is generally acknowledging the sheer weight and influence of McLuhan’s thinking.

McLuhan died peacefully in his sleep on the very last day of 1980. On McLuhan’s gravestone are the words "The Truth Shall Make You Free."

Years after his death he was appointed as the "Patron Saint of Wired Magazine" in recognition of his role as a media philosopher.

Reading List - Books by McLuhan

1951 The Mechanical Bride - Facsimile by Marshall McLuhan

1951 The Mechanical Bride : Folklore of Industrial Man by Marshall McLuhan and Philip B. Meggs

1962 The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man by Herbert Marshall McLuhan

1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan

1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man : Critical Edition by Marshall McLuhan

1967 The Medium is the Massage

1967 War and Peace In the Global Village by Marshall McLuhan

1992 Laws of Media: The New Science by Marshall McLuhan

1996 Essential McLuhan by Marshall McLuhan

2003 The Book of Probes by Marshall McLuhan (a compilation of his thinking.)

Books about McLuhan

1967 McLuhan, hot & cool;: A primer for the understanding of & a critical symposium with a rebuttal by McLuhan, by Gerald Emanuel Stearn

1983 Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan by Daniel J. Czitron

1993 Clarifying McLuhan: An Assessment of Process and Product (Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications) by S.D. Neill

1996 Who Was Marshall McLuhan: Exploring a Mosaic of Impressions by Barring Nevitt, Maurice McLuhan, Frank Zingrone, and Wayne Constantineau

1998 Electric Language : Understanding the Message by Eric McLuhan

1998 Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger by Philip Marchand

2001 Then What? A Funquiry into the Nature of Technology, HumanTransformation and Marshall McLuhan  by Jason Ohler

2001 Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium by Paul Levinson

2001 The Virtual Marshall McLuhan by Donald F. Theall and Edmund Carpenter 

2005 Marshall Mcluhan-Unbound by Terrence W. Gordon

2004 Marshall McLuhan (Core Cultural Theorists series) by Janine Marchessault 

2005 The Legacy of McLuhan (Hampton Press Communication) by Lance Strate and Edward Wachtel

1997 Forward Through the Rearview Mirror: Reflections on and by Marshall McLuhan by Paul Benedetti

2002 The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion by Marshall McLuhan, Eric McLuhan, Jacek Szlarek, and Jacek Szklarek

Electric McLuhan

1977 Annie Hall Directed by Woody Allen (DVD)

2000 John & Yoko’s Year of Peace DVD

Also check out the 2002 movie: McLuhan’s Wake - directed by Kevin McMahon and narrated by Laurie Anderson. Fairly obscure.

Some quotes from Marshall McLuhan

1  The story of modern America begins With the discovery of the white man by The Indians.

2  Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.

3  Whereas convictions depend on speed-ups, justice requires delay.

With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is “sent.”

Money is the poor man’s credit card.

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

Spaceship earth is still operated by railway conductors, just as NASA is managed by men with Newtonian goals.

Invention is the mother of necessities.

You mean my whole fallacy’s wrong?

Why is it so easy to acquire the solutions of past problems and so difficult to solve current ones?

The trouble with a cheap, specialized education is that you never stop paying for it.

People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.

The road is our major architectural form.