NMED 1000

Is the Medium the Message?

NMED 1000

• Marshall McLuhan– Marshall McLuhan

was born in 1911 to Elsie, a traveling elocutionist, and Herbert, a salesman, and raised in Winnipeg.

NMED 1000

• At the University in Manitoba, he was considered chatty and conservative; deeply religious, yet always ready to debate fundamental notions like evolution and creationism to the ground.

NMED 1000

• McLuhan is the theorist who coined the term “global village” and the phrase “the medium is the message”.

• When he studied at Cambridge University he would later claim that James Joyce was the first to catalogue the effects of electric technology in his revolutionary novel Finnegan’s Wake.

• http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/joyce1/

NMED 1000

• In 1964 McLuhan catapulted to fame when he published, Understanding Media, a book that revolutionized viewing media as environments, rather than objects.

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• McLuhan is noted to have said:– "My kind of study of communication is a study of

transformations...of how people are transformed by the media they use."

http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/mcluhan_marshall/Mcluhan-Marshall_On_Speaking-Freely_4_JAN_1971.mp3

NMED 1000

• Participation for Next Class:http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/mcluhan_marshall/Mcluhan-

Marshall_On_Speaking-Freely_4_JAN_1971.mp3

NMED 1000

• Lab Assignment• In preparation for your critical reviews,

read and take notes on the articles handed out today.

• Write down one idea presented in each article that caught your interest or attention to share and discuss in class.