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
The scientist rigorously defends his right to be ignorant of almost everything except his specialty.
All media work us over completely.
Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise, / Of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes? / That we by tracing magic lines are taught, / How to embody, and to colour THOUGHT?
I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.
The real news is bad news.
If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire.
The news automatically becomes the real world for the TV user and is not a substitute for reality, but is itself an immediate reality.
Ads are carefully designed by the Madison Avenue frog-men of-the-mind for semiconscious exposure.
I may be wrong, but I'm never in doubt.
The suddenness of the leap from hardware to software cannot but produce a period of anarchy and collapse, especially in the developed countries.
By phonemic trans-formation into visual terms, the alphabet became a universal, abstract, static container of meaningless sounds
In Tetrad form, the artifact is seen to be not neutral or passive, bur an active logos or utterance of the human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground.
At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential.
The poet, the artist, the sleuth, whoever sharpens our perception tends to antisocial; rarely 'well adjusted,' he cannot go along with currents and trends.