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
Attention spans get very weak at the speed of light, and that goes along with a very week identity.
Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It's called being mass man.
The user of the electric light -- or a hammer, or a language, or a book -- is the content. As such, there is a total metamorphosis of the user by the interface. It is the metamorphosis that I consider the message.
The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.
Scribal culture and Gothic architecture were both concerned with light through, not light on.
Everybody at the speed of light tends to become a nobody.
The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message
Transmitted at the speed of light, all events on this planet are simultaneous. In the electric environment of information all events are simultaneous, there is no time or space separating events.
A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.
Except for light, all other media come in pairs, with one acting as the "content" of the other, obscuring the operation of both.
The alphabet was one thing when applied to clay or stone, and quite another when set down on light papyrus.