Media Theorist
An investigator of invisible environments. He turned attention from what our media say to what their forms do to our senses and societies.
Media Theorist & Perceptual Provocateur
Born in Edmonton, McLuhan studied English at Manitoba and Cambridge. His training in close reading would become a way of examining the surrounding culture.
At St. Michael’s College in Toronto, he brought the habits of literary criticism to advertisements, popular entertainment and technology. The ordinary world became material for investigation.
What changes when a society adopts print, radio or television? McLuhan treats media as extensions of human capacities, asking how each rearranges perception and social life.
Begin with a medium you use every day. His questions may make its familiar effects newly visible.
With designer Quentin Fiore and producer Jerome Agel, The Medium Is the Massage made typography, images and page turns part of the argument. Form was doing some of the thinking.
McLuhan died in Toronto in 1980. His books and filmed lectures leave a practice of attention: noticing the environments that shape us while we are busy looking at their contents.
1960 · Research report · 152 pages
An early investigation of communication media and their effects.Read report · Free PDFAphorisms, passages and probes
A searchable selection of his writing, introduced by the McLuhan estate.Explore the collection
Terence McKennaLanguage, culture and the possibilities of perception
Carl SaganBringing a world of ideas through the television screen
