McLuhan, Marshall

McLuhan, Marshall (Herbert Marshall McLuhan), 1911–80, Canadian communications theorist and educator, b. Edmonton, Alta. He taught at the Univ. of Toronto (1946–80) and at other institutions of higher education in Canada and the United States. McLuhan gained popularity and fame in the 1960s with his prophetic proposal that electronic media, especially television, were creating a "global village" in which "the medium is the message," i.e., the means of communications has a greater influence on people than the information itself. His books include The Mechanical Bride (1951), The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Understanding Media (1964), From Cliché to Archetype (1970, with W. Watson), and City as Classroom (1977, with K. Hutchon and E. McLuhan).

Bibliography

See biography by W. T. Gordon (1997).

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McLuhan, (Herbert) Marshall

(born July 21, 1911, Edmonton, Alta., Can.—died Dec. 31, 1980, Toronto, Ont.) Canadian communications theorist and educator. He taught from 1946 at the University of Toronto and became popular for his aphorism “the medium is the message,” which summarized his view of the potent influence of “hot media”—television, computers, and other electronic information disseminators—in shaping styles of thinking and thought, whether in sociology, art, science, or religion. He regarded the printed book, a “cool medium,” as fated to disappear. His highly influential works include The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Understanding Media (1964), and The Medium Is the Massage (with Q. Fiore, 1967).