As a prolific lecturer, author and communication theorist, Marshall McLuhan explored the implications of technology on society, encouraging people to reconsider their relationship with it. His incredible foresight earned him nicknames such as ‘Dr. Spock of Pop Culture’ and ‘apprentice of the media.’
Early Days
Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton, Canada, on July 21, 1911. His father sold real estate and insurance, and his mother was an actress. McLuhan attended the University of Manitoba and completed an honors program in English and philosophy. According to NNDB, in 1935, he completed an M.A. and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Literature at Cambridge University.
Sources in this Story
- Encyclopedia.com: Marshall McLuhan
- Wired: Honoring Wired’s Patron Saint
- Center for Media Literacy: Marshall McLuhan: The Revolution is – Media!
- NNDB: Marshall McLuhan
- The Official Site of Marshall McLuhan: Frequently Asked Questions
- WNYC: The Medium is the Massage: Celebrating Marshall McLuhan’s Legacy
- The New Atlantis: Why Bother with Marshall McLuhan
Notable Accomplishments
According to Wired magazine, McLuhan was teaching at the University of Wisconsin and “found himself unable to communicate with his hipster students.” As a result, “he began to study advertising in order to better speak their pop-culture language.” This led McLuhan to look at media in a new way, at a time when media studies departments didn’t exist.
McLuhan went on to teach at the University of Toronto where he would establish the Centre for Culture and Technology, a “think tank studying the psychological and social consequences of technologies and media,” according to NNDB. McLuhan wrote several books, including, “Understanding Media.” This book was “McLuhan’s big hit,” according to Kate Moody writing for the Center for Media Literacy. “There, perhaps for the first time, he introduced his basic theme that media—speech, print, photography, telegraphy, telephone, film, radio, television—all function as extensions of the human organism to increase power and speed,” Moody wrote.
According to Dr. Eric McLuhan on the Official Site of Marshall McLuhan, the title of one of Marshall’s most famous works, originally “The Medium is the Message,” was returned from its first printing with a typo in the title, resulting in “The Medium is the Massage.” Marshall McLuhan was happy with the mistake, however, exclaiming, “Leave it alone! It’s great, and right on target!” Eric McLuhan explains that the last word of the title can be read in four possible ways: “Message,” “Mess Age,” “Massage” and “Mass Age.”
The McLuhan Salon, a multimedia center in Canada’s embassy in Berlin, has a number of articles and videos from the 2011 celebration of his 100th birthday.
The Man and His Work
- “The Medium is the Massage” by Marshal McLuhan, Quentin Fiore
- “Understanding Media” by Marshall McLuhan, Lewis H. Lapham
- “The Gutenberg Galaxy” by Marshall McLuhan
- “The Global Village” by Marshall McLuhan, Bruce R. Powers
The Rest of the Story
Throughout his life, McLuhan suffered from frequent blackouts, and in his midlife, a large tumor was discovered on his brain. He underwent surgery in 1967, and although he recovered, the effects of the operation changed his life. He grew to be “hypersensitive,” and discovered that “several years of reading got rubbed out,” NNDB reports. In 1979, he suffered a stroke that forced him to retire from teaching. McLuhan died in Toronto on December 31, 1980.
As the centennial of his birth approached in 2011, his work was revisited. Some honored his contributions, while others, such as New Atlantic contributing editor Alan Jacobs criticized his writing and assertions. Despite his criticism, Jacobs acknowledged that, “McLuhan’s determination to bring the vast resources of humanistic scholarship to bear upon the analysis of new media is an astonishingly fruitful one, and an example to be followed.”
