Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CCwas a Canadian professor, philosopher, and public intellectual. His work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory, as well as having practical applications in the advertising and television industries. He was educated at the University of Manitoba and Cambridge University and began his teaching career as a Professor of English at several universities in the U.S. and Canada, before moving to the University of Toronto where he would remain for the...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 July 1911
CityEdmonton, Canada
CountryCanada
My 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. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.
Most clear writing is a sign that there is no exploration going on. Clear prose indicates the absence of thought.
Nowadays there is no conversation at all. Teachers distrust talk as much as business men.
The village had institutionalized all human functions in forms of low intensity.... Participation was high and organization was low. This is the formula for stability.
The modern nose, like the modern eye, has developed a sort of microscopic, intercellular intensity which makes our human contactspainful and revolting.
One main condition of aristocratic life was present in the South and not in the North--personal responsibility to other human beings for education and material welfare. (A Carnegie or a Ford, like a bureaucracy, molds the lives of millions without taking any responsibility.)
As a rule, I always look for what others ignore.
The winner is one who knows when to drop out in order to get in touch.
North Americans have a peculiar bias. They go outside to be alone and they go home to be social.
Scribal culture and Gothic architecture were both concerned with light through, not light on.
Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay.
Even mud gives the illusion of depth.
Only a fraction of the history of literacy has been typographic.
A nomadic society cannot experience enclosed space.