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
Typography is not only a technology but is in itself a natural resource or staple, like cotton or timber or radio; and, like any staple, it shapes not only private sense ratios but also patterns of communal interdependence.
Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.
Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of society. The amateur can afford to lose. The professional tends to classify and specialise, to accept uncritically the groundrules of the environment. The groundrules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware. The 'expert' is the man who stays put.
The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns.
The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action.
Professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti environmental. Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the ground rules of society. The amateur can afford to loose.
The student of media soon comes to expect the New Media of any period whatever to be classed as 'pseudo' by those who acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they may happen to be.
All meaning alters with acceleration, because all patterns of personal and political interdependence change with any acceleration of information.
Metaphor has traditionally been regarded as the matrix and pattern of the figures of speech.
When information overload occurs, pattern recognition is how to determine truth.
Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials
Money is just the poor man's credit card.
Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last-ditch stand of the artist.
ONLY THE SMALL SECRETS NEED TO BE PROTECTED.THE BIG ONES ARE KEPT SECRET BY PUBLIC INCREDULITY.