Marshall McLuhan, Professor of Literature and Culture, Cross-Discipline Thinker and World’s First Media Theorist

“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us,” Marshall McLuhan (video – introduction by Tom Wolfe) once said. McLuhan was a visionary and thought leader, popularized the ideas “'the medium is the message”' and “'the global village.”

He is credited as being the first media theorist and predicted the Internet and the impact it would subsequently have on society.

Name: Herbert Marshall McLuhan

Birth Date: July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980

Job Functions: Canadian Professor of Literature and Culture

Fields: Literature and Media Theory

Known For: Developed a theory of media and human development claiming that “the medium is the message.”

Influence: Marshall McLuhan was influenced by the works of Toronto economist and historian Harold Innis – The Bias of Communication (1951) and Empire and Communications (1950, 1972).

Have you read?

SummaReview of The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan

Application of Marshall McLuhan’s Ideas That Matter

1. We are comfortable with the old ways, and we tend to look at the present through old lens, what if we were to leapfrog into the future and view the present with future lens?
2. Have a specialty, but also know a little about a lot, so that you can think across disciplines for breakthroughs.

Marshall McLuhan “invented” media studies and its relation to culture and society. He believed that television, computers, and other media, far more than their content, that is reshaping civilization. Is that true today, when most believe that content is king?

McLuhan defines media to mean “any forms of technology that function to extend and widen the human senses and limbs by abolishing temporal-spatial limitations.

For instance, the telephone is the extension of the ear, just as the wheel is the extension of foot and leg, and clothing is that of skin. McLuhan’s approach sees media as including all technologically constructed artifacts such as buildings, roads, planes, automation, and so on.”

McLuhan fell out of favour and was vilified by academics for his ideas, because he refused to defend them when he was criticized. In 2011, the centenary of his birth, all was forgiven, and many praised him because his beliefs and predictions were true.

Marshall McLuhan’s Steps to Success

1. Marshall McLuhan studied engineering and literature at the University of Manitoba, earning his B.A. degree in 1933 and M.A. in 1934.
2. Continued his studies in medieval education and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University and received an M.A. degree in 1940 and the Ph.D. in 1942.
3. Taught in American universities, then returned to Canada and became a full professor at the University of Toronto in 1952.
4. Through the books he wrote, McLuhan probed and explored the way communications influences society, drawing on his extensive knowledge base.
5. In 1951, before his ideas were fully developed, he published The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man.
6. In 1962, he published The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, which he won the 1963 Governor-General's Award for critical writing.
7. In 1963, he published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
8. Although, McLuhan published his ideas, his books were very difficult to understand, so he appeared frequently on television to explain his media theories.  He also tried to write a reader friendly book, which was published as The Medium is the Massage in 1967. He preferred to speak than to write.
9. McLuhan was the first to seriously study advertising, and called it “Folklore of Industrial Man” in his book, The Mechanical Bride.
10. McLuhan coined the phrase “The medium is the message” after hearing the anthropologist Ashley Montagu deliver a lecture on science titled “The Method is the Message.” He absorbed the works of Toronto economist and historian Harold Innis.
11. Was a cross-discipline thinker – sources for his writings came from anthropology, economic theory, psychology, philosophy from antiquity to the twentieth century, literary criticism, and English and European literatures spanning four centuries. He also drew from thinkers such as T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, St. Thomas Aquinas, Lewis Mumford, and a group of scholars at Toronto in the 1950s, such as anthropologist Edmund Carpenter.
12. Through his lectures and classes, he “forced others to challenge their basic assumptions…stimulated  people into making up their own minds and used his thinking as a catalyst.

Biggest Accomplishments/Why Marshall McLuhan’s Contribution Matters

• Predicted the Internet and its impact on society.
• McLuhan “invented” media studies and its relation to culture and society.

Lessons from Marshall McLuhan

1. Don’t wait until your ideas are fully developed before you present them to the world – take a risk and create art. Before McLuhan fully developed and refined his ideas, he published The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man.
2. Build on the ideas and works of others: McLuhan coined the phrase “The medium is the message” after hearing the anthropologist Ashley Montagu deliver a lecture on science titled “The Method is the Message.” He also absorbed the works of Toronto economist and historian Harold Innis.
3. Approach things from a different perspective: Conventional communication studies evaluated media content while ignoring how the message was actually delivered to recipients. McLuhan flipped things around, and gave more importance to the medium than the message and form over content. But he also noted that content is also form. “He argued that the content of any medium is not only a message, but also, more importantly, always another medium. For instance, the written word is the content of print and, at the same time, the medium of speech.”

Marshall McLuhan’s Ideas That Matter

Marshall McLuhan made the distinction between a “hot” medium and a “cool” one.  “According to McLuhan, television, which is low in definition and requires audience involvement, is a “cool” medium, whereas the informative book is a “hot” medium. The participatory conditioning of a “cool” medium has implications for education” (American Decades Primary Sources). With technology and gamification, an informative book, can be transformed from being a “hot” medium to a “cool” one enabling learning through playing the games.

Books/Works by Marshall McLuhan

The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951) 

The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962)

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)

The Medium is the Massage (1967)

 The Medium is the Massage The Mechanical Bride – Facsimile Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man The Gutenberg Galaxy Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man : Critical Edition Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century The Essential McLuhan Understanding Media: (Routledge Classics) Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding

Sources Cited/Referenced

Encyclopedia of World Biography

International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences

St James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture

Maclean’s, March 22, 2010

Encyclopedia of Communication and Information

The New York Times , July 26, 2011

American Decades Primary Sources: “A Dialogue—

Marshall McLuhan and Gerald Emanuel Stearn” Interview

American Decades

Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics.