« New Vatican web portal launched | Main | Some reflections/comparisons of social networking sites »
Happy 100th Birthday, Marshall McLuhan
By Rosie Perera | July 21, 2011 at 9:41 pm
We all know Marshall McLuhan for his overly quoted phrases: “the medium is the message” and the “global village”; but how many of us have actually read any McLuhan? I confess I have not. I’ve read others who have studied him (such as Neil Postman), and I have his influential Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man on my shelf of technology books waiting to be read. But I’ve been told that he’s actually not very interesting or easy to read directly; he’s quirky, aphoristic, and enigmatic. (Nicholas Carr says, “His books read like accounts of acid trips written by a bureaucrat.”) And most of the authors I’ve read who refer to him probably haven’t read him either, but have just digested a few of his key ideas: e.g., the tetrad of media effects, “hot” and “cool” media. I just learned today from the Wikipedia article on him that even though he died a decade before the Web came along, he pioneered the metaphorical use of the verb “surfing” (through data) in the way that we use it ubiquitously now for the Internet.
Anyway, John Dyer brought my attention to the fact that today McLuhan would have been 100. He has left his mark on our culture. Here is a link to John post about him which links to several good articles:
McLuhan at 100: Three Great Articles on His Vision, Failures, Legacy, and Faith
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.