Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory, and he is known as 'th…
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory, and he is known as 'the father of media studies.' ◦ He was born in Edmonton, Alberta and raised in Winnipeg, and he studied at the University of Manitoba and Cambridge before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. ◦ While studying at Cambridge, he took the first steps toward his conversion to Catholicism in 1937, founded on his reading of G. K. Chesterton, and he was devout throughout his life, though his religion remained a private matter. ◦ He had a lifelong interest in the number three (the trivium, the Trinity) and sometimes said the Virgin Mary provided intellectual guidance for him. ◦
McLuhan coined the expression 'the medium is the message' and the term 'global village.' ◦ His main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology, and he stated that he does not say whether it is a good or bad thing because to do so would be meaningless and arrogant. ◦ He held that the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village, and that electro-magnetic discoveries have recreated the simultaneous "field" in all human affairs so that the human family now exists under conditions of a "global village" and we live in a single constricted space resonant with tribal drums. ◦ He warned that the electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was formed, and he argued the effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but rather alter patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. ◦ His central point is that in the long run the content of a medium matters less than the medium itself in influencing us, and that a new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace, never ceasing to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them. ◦ He maintained that he is not advocating anything but merely probing and predicting trends, and that even if he opposed them or thought them disastrous, he couldn't stop them, so there is no use wasting his time lamenting. ◦ He viewed cataclysmic environmental changes as morally neutral in themselves, believing that it is how we perceive them and react to them that will determine their ultimate psychic and social consequences, and that if we refuse to see them at all, we will become their servants. ◦ He held that the business of art is no longer the communication of thoughts or feelings which are to be conceptually ordered, but a direct participation in an experience, and that the whole tendency of modern communication is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts. ◦
McLuhan described the method of the twentieth century as using not single but multiple models for experimental exploration—the technique of the suspended judgement. ◦ In his investigative stance, he stated that he is not advocating anything but merely probing and predicting trends, and that even if he opposed them or thought them disastrous, he couldn't stop them, so why waste his time lamenting. ◦ When pressed for his private opinion, he separated diagnosis from preference, saying he does not like to tell people what he thinks is good or bad about the social and psychic changes caused by new media. ◦ He admitted that he views such upheavals with total personal dislike and dissatisfaction, and that while he sees the prospect of a rich and creative retribalized society, he has nothing but distaste for the process of change. ◦ He counseled keeping our cool during the descent into the maelstrom, studying the process as it happens to us and what we can do about it. ◦ He argued that an understanding of media's effects constitutes a civil defense against media fallout. ◦
McLuhan's notable ideas include figure and ground, the tetrad of media effects, hot and cool media, and media ecology. ◦ He held that the present is always invisible because it's environmental, and that no environment is perceptible simply because it saturates the whole field of attention. ◦ He also held that environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally. ◦ He believed that people in new environments always produce the new perceptual modality without any difficulty or awareness of change, and that it is later that the psychic and social realignments baffle societies. ◦ He maintained that when technology extends one of our senses, a new translation of culture occurs as swiftly as the new technology is interiorized. ◦ He described the method of the twentieth century as using not single but multiple models for experimental exploration—the technique of the suspended judgement. ◦ He paraphrased Buckminster Fuller's Spaceship Earth in 1965, stating, 'There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.' ◦
His work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory, and he is known as 'the father of media studies.' ◦ His notable ideas include the medium is the message, the global village, figure and ground, the tetrad of media effects, hot and cool media, media ecology, and the post-literate society. ◦ He held that a theory of cultural change is impossible without knowledge of the changing sense ratios effected by various externalizations of our senses. ◦ He wrote that the invention of typography confirmed and extended the new visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first uniformly repeatable "commodity," the first assembly-line, and the first mass-production, and that a fixed point of view becomes possible with print and ends the image as a plastic organism. ◦
McLuhan coined the expression 'the medium is the message' and the term 'global village,' suggesting an aphoristic and terminological inventiveness. ◦ He employed metaphors such as the 'global village,' 'tribal drums,' 'Spaceship Earth,' and the 'maelstrom' to describe technological and social conditions. ◦ ◦ He repeatedly stated his main theme over and over again, and in interviews he apologized for having to repeat disclaimers that he is not advocating anything. ◦ ◦ When pressed for his private opinion, he separated diagnosis from preference, stating he does not like to tell people what he thinks is good or bad. ◦
McLuhan was devout throughout his life, but his religion remained a private matter, and he sometimes said the Virgin Mary provided intellectual guidance for him. ◦ He insisted that he is not advocating anything and does not say whether developments are good or bad, yet when pressed he admitted that he views such upheavals with total personal dislike and dissatisfaction, and that he has nothing but distaste for the process of change. ◦ ◦ He foresaw the prospect of a rich and creative retribalized society while simultaneously expressing distaste for the process of change. ◦ He had a lifelong interest in the number three (the trivium, the Trinity). ◦
He counseled keeping our cool during the descent into the maelstrom, studying the process as it happens to us and what we can do about it. ◦ He argued that an understanding of media's effects constitutes a civil defense against media fallout. ◦ He warned that if we refuse to see cataclysmic environmental changes at all, we will become their servants. ◦ He advocated using not single but multiple models for experimental exploration—the technique of the suspended judgement. ◦