Marshall McLuhan

Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar (1911–1980)

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Lived 1911–1980, aged 69Canada

Canada AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
67 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1911–1980
Aged 69
Known for
Annie Hall
1977

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

He said "the medium is the message" decades before anyone understood what that meant, and sketched the internet thirty years before it existed. McLuhan made a career of seeing the shape of the future while standing in the analog past.

Biography

About

Born in Winnipeg in 1911, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba and Cambridge before teaching English at universities across the U.S. and Canada. In 1946 he landed at the University of Toronto and stayed put. There he wrote Understanding Media and coined "the medium is the message" and "global village" — phrases that made him a media-circuit fixture in the late 1960s. By the early '70s his influence had cooled, and he died in 1980 with his reputation still contested in academic circles. Then the internet arrived, and suddenly the man who predicted the World Wide Web three decades early…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

said1954

Human perception is literally incarnation.

— "Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters", in Christian Humanism in Letters, The McAuley Lectures (1954), p. 49-67

Marshall McLuhan

said1953

Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.

— Commonweal, Vol. 58 (1953), p. 557

Marshall McLuhan

said14 Mar 1951

There is a real, living unity in our time, as in any other, but it lies submerged under a superficial hubbub of sensation.

— Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 223

Marshall McLuhan

said14 Mar 1951

The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action.

— Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 74

Marshall McLuhan

said14 Mar 1951

The business of art is no longer the communication of thoughts or feelings which are to be conceptually ordered, but a direct participation in an experience.

— Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 73

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