With our multimedia-centric world, Marshall McLuhan is once again becoming popular. His seminal work, The Medium is the Massage has been rereleased by Wired Magazine.

McLuhan was a brilliant Canadian writer, whose unorthodox theories on communications sprang from his conviction that electronic media themselves have an impact far greater than that of the material they communicate.

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, McLuhan was educated at the universities of Manitoba and Cambridge. Later he taught at various universities in the United States and Canada.

McLuhan is best known for coining the phrase "the medium is the message," which became popular in the 1960s. He argued that in each cultural era the medium in which information is recorded and transmitted is decisive in determining the character of that culture. McLuhan also believed that the linking of electronic information media would create an interconnected "global village."

As a scholar of the effects of technology on human society, McLuhan is regarded as one of the most important 20th-century communications theorists. He believed that as various media come and go they effect culture so completely, that it is impossible to understand that culture without a grasp of the communications and how contemporary humans senses have been altered by that media.

McLuhan's beliefs are in contrast with Richard E. Clark, etc. This is to say, it is the vehicle rather than philosophy or educational material that is of importance in education

Marshall McLuhan might as well be considered the first philosopher of the digital age, or at least, patron saint of the Internet. His insights into its effects, and the effects of electronic digital communications, were "just in time" to make him a media celebrity in the 1960's and 70's.

McLuhan began his contributions by examining the historical impact of media. His early books were thoughtful, yet dry books about the changes to society wrought by the industrial age and the printing press.

As he began to get move further into the study of electronic media, and speculations of the effects these media would have on mankind, his ideas began to become more wildly flamboyant and profound.

McLuhan understood media as extensions of man - the wheel an extension of the foot - the book and extension of the eye. He believed that all media are teaching us, not only by the content they carry, but in the way they deliver it.

Publications

The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951)

The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)

The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967)

War and Peace in the Global Village (1967)