Herbert Marshall McLuhan, was a Canadian professor, philosopher, and public intellectual. His work is one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory, as well as having practical applications in the advertising and television industries. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge; he 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 remained for the rest of his life.
McLuhan is known for coining the expression "the medium is the message" and the term global village, and for predicting the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years after his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. With the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, however, interest was renewed in his work and perspective.
“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and
understanding.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”
Statement in 1965, in reference to Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963) by Buckminster Fuller, as quoted Paradigms Lost: Learning from Environmental Mistakes, Mishaps and Misdeeds (2005) by Daniel A. Vallero, p. 367
1960s
Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 99
Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 5
Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 413
1980s and later
Context: I am not a "culture critic" because I am not in any way interested in classifying cultural forms. I am a metaphysician, interested in the life of the forms and their surprising modalities. That is why I have no interest in the academic world.
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 263
Understanding Media (1964)
Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 141
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 16
Source: 1990s and beyond, A McLuhan Sourcebook (1995), p. 291
Source: 1970s, Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972), p. 90
“Scribal culture and Gothic architecture were both concerned with light through, not light on.”
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 120
“Only a fraction of the history of literacy has been typographic.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 84
Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 74
1950s
“There is nothing willful or arbitrary about the Innis mode of expression.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 216; this paragraph was quoted as "context (0) - THE INNIS MODE" by John Brunner, the epigraph or first chapter in his novel Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: There is nothing willful or arbitrary about the Innis mode of expression. Were it to be translated into perspective prose, it would not only require huge space, but the insight into the modes of interplay among forms of organisation would also be lost. Innis sacrificed point of view and prestige to his sense of the urgent need for insight. A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. As Innis got more insight he abandoned any mere point of view in his presentation of knowledge. When he interrelates the development of the steam press with 'the consolidation of the vernaculars' and the rise of nationalism and revolution he is not reporting anybody's point of view, least of all his own. He is setting up a mosaic configuration or galaxy for insight … Innis makes no effort to "spell out" the interrelations between the components in his galaxy. He offers no consumer packages in his later work, but only do-it-yourself kits...
Understanding Media (1964)
Context: Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber. (p. 261)
“Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 26
“The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations.”
1970s, The Education of Mike McManus, TVOntario, December 28 1977
“Only puny secrets need protection. Big secrets are protected by public incredulity.”
Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972)
Context: Only puny secrets need protection. Big secrets are protected by public incredulity. You can actually dissipate a situation by giving it maximal coverage. As to alarming people, that's done by rumours, not by coverage. (p. 92)
“I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.”
Letter to Robert Fulford, 1964. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 300
1960s
Context: My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 186
“In antiquity and the Middle Ages reading was necessarily reading aloud.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 94
“Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light.”
It's called being mass man.
1970s, The Education of Mike McManus, TVOntario, December 28 1977
“Innis sacrificed point of view and prestige to his sense of the urgent need for insight.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 216; this paragraph was quoted as "context (0) - THE INNIS MODE" by John Brunner, the epigraph or first chapter in his novel Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: There is nothing willful or arbitrary about the Innis mode of expression. Were it to be translated into perspective prose, it would not only require huge space, but the insight into the modes of interplay among forms of organisation would also be lost. Innis sacrificed point of view and prestige to his sense of the urgent need for insight. A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. As Innis got more insight he abandoned any mere point of view in his presentation of knowledge. When he interrelates the development of the steam press with 'the consolidation of the vernaculars' and the rise of nationalism and revolution he is not reporting anybody's point of view, least of all his own. He is setting up a mosaic configuration or galaxy for insight … Innis makes no effort to "spell out" the interrelations between the components in his galaxy. He offers no consumer packages in his later work, but only do-it-yourself kits...
“The hardware world tends to move into software form at the speed of light.”
1970s, The Education of Mike McManus, TVOntario, December 28 1977
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 216; this paragraph was quoted as "context (0) - THE INNIS MODE" by John Brunner, the epigraph or first chapter in his novel Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: There is nothing willful or arbitrary about the Innis mode of expression. Were it to be translated into perspective prose, it would not only require huge space, but the insight into the modes of interplay among forms of organisation would also be lost. Innis sacrificed point of view and prestige to his sense of the urgent need for insight. A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. As Innis got more insight he abandoned any mere point of view in his presentation of knowledge. When he interrelates the development of the steam press with 'the consolidation of the vernaculars' and the rise of nationalism and revolution he is not reporting anybody's point of view, least of all his own. He is setting up a mosaic configuration or galaxy for insight … Innis makes no effort to "spell out" the interrelations between the components in his galaxy. He offers no consumer packages in his later work, but only do-it-yourself kits...
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 280
“Typographic man can express but is helpless to read the configurations of print technology.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 245
“Media are means of extending and enlarging our organic sense lives into our environment.”
"The Care and Feeding of Communication Innovation", Dinner Address to Conference on 8 mm Sound Film and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, 8 November 1961
1960s
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 230
“Nobody ever made a grammatical error in a non-literate society.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 271
1970s, The Education of Mike McManus, TVOntario, December 28 1977
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 220
“The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.”
The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)
Context: The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village. (p. 36)
“As Innis got more insight he abandoned any mere point of view in his presentation of knowledge.”
Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 216; this paragraph was quoted as "context (0) - THE INNIS MODE" by John Brunner, the epigraph or first chapter in his novel Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: There is nothing willful or arbitrary about the Innis mode of expression. Were it to be translated into perspective prose, it would not only require huge space, but the insight into the modes of interplay among forms of organisation would also be lost. Innis sacrificed point of view and prestige to his sense of the urgent need for insight. A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. As Innis got more insight he abandoned any mere point of view in his presentation of knowledge. When he interrelates the development of the steam press with 'the consolidation of the vernaculars' and the rise of nationalism and revolution he is not reporting anybody's point of view, least of all his own. He is setting up a mosaic configuration or galaxy for insight … Innis makes no effort to "spell out" the interrelations between the components in his galaxy. He offers no consumer packages in his later work, but only do-it-yourself kits...
“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
Source: War and Peace in the Global Village
1960s, Understanding Media (1964)
Source: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
“Art is whatever you can get away with.”
1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967)
Source: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967)
Source: Take Today: The Executive as Dropout
The Medium is the Message (1967), A chapter sub-heading attributed by McLuhan to Alfred North Whitehead
“All words, in every language, are metaphors.”
Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 120
“Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.”
quoted in Advertising Age, Sep. 3, 1976
1970s
Variant: Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century
Context: Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.
Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 26
Source: The Medium is the Massage
Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 352
“The bible belt is oral territory and therefore despised by the literati.”
The Critic, Volume 33, Thomas More Association, 1974, p. 12
1970s
“Color is not so much a visual as a tactile medium.”
1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970)
