Herbert Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton, Canada in 1911. The conservative Catholic Canadian was considered one of the founders of critical media studies. McLuhan became internationally famous during the 60s for his studies on the effect on mass media on thoughts and behaviour. His books Understanding media: the extension of man (McGravHill 1964) and The medium is the message: An inventory of effects. (with designer Quintin Fiore, Random House 1967) made him a pop culture figure. As a result of his popularity The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology was created at the University of Toronto. The focus of the centre is on intellectual growth and stimulation.
HIS LIFE
A few years after his birth his whole family moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba. In retrospect McLuhan professed to never being bothered by grooving up in a backwater. Infact it seemed to have given him an excellent field of vision. “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 seem to have a point of view. He has a vast panorama…a total field of vision� (from biography 3- Marshall McLuhan website). His father; Herbert, who was genial but unambitious, sold life insurance. From his mother, Elsie, he acquired a remarkable facility to memorize and give impromptu speeches. She was described as a restless, domineering force, and she was a great speaker who gave dramatic monologues in theatres and church basements(Zingrone 2004).
When McLuhan was an undergraduate at the University of Manitoba he wrote in his diary that he would never become an academic. In spite of his professors he learned, and in spit of what he wrote, he eventually became a professor in English. After finishing a Bachelor and a Masters degree at University of Manitoba in 1934, McLuhan went to the University of Cambridge were he finished a Ph.D in 1942. It was here when he was doing his post graduate work at that his interest in media analysis started. At Cambridge he studied under I. A. Richards, a psychologist turned literary critic. For Richards it was not the content of the poem that mattered but how it communicated. In later years this technique was adapted by McLuhan to the studies of media (official web page of McLuhan).
After leaving Cambridge, McLuhan was given his first teaching post at the University of Wisconsin. At the University he had an experience that shocked him. Even though his student was only five to eight years his junior he felt removed from them by a generation. He suspected that this was to do with ways of learning, and it propelled him towards media analysis. He stayed at the University of Wisconsin for one year before he followed his conversion to Catholicism and joined the University of St. Louis, a Jesuit institution. Here he met and married Corinne Keller Lewis, a drama student from Texas. Together they had six children. In 1944 he returned to Canada where he taught for two years at what was then known as Assumption College, before settling at University of Toronto, were he stayed for the remainder of his career(official web page of McLuhan;).
HIS WORK
The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and Understanding Media (1964) established Marshall McLuhan’s reputation. He claimed that individuals and society was affected by the different mediums in distinct and pervasive ways. He classified media as ‘hot’ and ‘cool’. ‘Hot’ media engages one’s senses in a highly intensive and exclusive way such as typography, radio and film. ‘Cool’ media has a lower resolution of intensity, and it there fore requires more interaction from the view, such as television and the telephone. In it’s time many of McLuhan’s theories seemed absurd and ridiculous to many. His central message was that to understand today’s world we must actively study the effects of media (McLuhan 1964).
HIS LEGACY
Marshall McLuhan’s legacy is said to be both complex and controversial, just as he was in his own lifetime. He seems to have been somewhat a head of his time with predictions of the “Global Village�. He predicted that electronic technology would decentralize power and information, witch would allow people to live in areas far from major urbane centres and still have access to the same information. It is claimed that we now live in the world that McLuhan outlined 30 years ago. His main thesis was that “media are so persuasive in their personal, political, economic, esthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave now part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered�. McLuhan defined media in the broadest sense, as an extension of the human body, expanding our eyes, ears and nervous system, changes the relationship between our senses, and altering the way we think and experience the world(Roth 1999; Stille 2000; Rothstein 1997).
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Camilla Hestdal 08:55, 29 Oct 2004 (EST)
