Anniversary tributes
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
As icons go, few Canadians can claim the cachet of Herbert Marshall McLuhan. Think of it: a humble, tweedy academic (an English literature scholar, no less) who became a household name, right up there with the Beatles, Andy Warhol and Timothy Leary. For most of the 1960s and part of the 1970s, McLuhan seemed to be everywhere – on radio, in print, in film (most notably with a cameo appearance in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall ) and especially on television.
McLuhan: From tweedy academic to household name
Marshall McLuhan, right, backs up Woody Allen in the film Annie Hall.
Thanks, Marshall, I think we've finally got the message... | Technology | The Observer
Why McLuhan's chilling vision still matters today | Douglas Coupland | Comment is free
'What’s spooking us all is the inevitable message of these new media: what will be the psychic fallout of these technologies on our inner lives?'. Photograph: D Hurst/Alamy Over the years I've been asking people in my life who are old enough to remember which technological change felt more like a cathartic change to society: TV in the 1950s or the internet since 2000.
The Big Ideas podcast: The medium is the message | Comment is free
The writing of the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this Thursday, has entered popular jargon like that of few other modern intellectuals.
McLuhan at 100
This week — Thursday, July 21, to be precise — marks the 100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan’s birth.
There was no longer a single thing in [the] environment that was not interesting [...] “Even if it’s some place I don’t find congenial, like a dull movie or a nightclub, I’m busy perceiving patterns,” he once told a reporter.
