McLuhan, Marshall

Biography

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was an internationally-renowned media theorist and perhaps the first genuinely “modern” philosopher of communications. In the 1950s, he introduced the concept of the “global village,” a vast global “technological mind” that today would be called the Internet. Using humor and scholarship, he spoke of the interconnectedness of visual and written media—and nowhere do his theories achieve a more finished level than in the tetrads, as important visually as they are syntactically.

Besides co-writing Laws of Media in 1988 and working closely for many years with his father, Dr. Eric McLuhan has been deeply involved in exploring media ecology and communications. He is the author of more than a dozen books on media, perception, and literature. Currently, he is director of Media Studies and lectures at The Harris Institute for the Arts in Toronto.