Marshal McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan, c. 1936
Born	Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-07-21)July 21, 1911 Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Died	December 31, 1980(1980-12-31) (aged 69) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
School	Media theory, Toronto School of communication theory
Main interests	Media, mass media, sensorium, New Criticism
Notable ideas	"The medium is the message", global village, figure and ground media, tetrad of media effects, "hot" and "cool" media
Influences Harold Innis, Eric A. Havelock, Thomas Nashe, G. K. Chesterton, I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, Wyndham Lewis, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp
Influenced Walter J. Ong, Neil Postman, Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, Wired, William Irwin Thompson, Paul Levinson, Douglas Rushkoff, Douglas Coupland, Jean Baudrillard, Abbie Hoffman, Ann Nocenti

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was 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 the University of Cambridge; he 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 remained for the rest of his life.

McLuhan is known for coining the expression "the medium is the message" and the term global village, and for predicting the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years after his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. With the arrival of the internet, however, interest has renewed in his work and perspective.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton, Alberta to Elsie Naomi (née Hall) and Herbert Ernest McLuhan, both born in Canada. His brother Maurice was born two years later. "Marshall" was his maternal grandmother's surname. His mother was a Baptist schoolteacher who later became an actress; his father was a Methodist and had a real estate business in Edmonton. That business failed when World War I broke out, and McLuhan's father enlisted in the Canadian army. After a year of service, he contracted influenza and remained in Canada, away from the front. After his discharge from the army in 1915, the McLuhan family moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where Marshall grew up and went to school, attending Kelvin Technical School before enrolling in the University of Manitoba in 1928.