McLuhan, Marshall

McLuhan, Marshall ( Herbert Marshall McLuhan ) ( 1911 – 80 ),
Canadian scholar, born in Edmonton, and educated at the universities of Manitoba and Cambridge. His studies of the media of communication and the role of technology in society proved highly influential: these include The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man ( 1951 ); The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man ( 1962 ), which introduced the concept of the ‘global village’ created by electronic interdependence, and Understanding the Media ( 1964 ), which explored the proposal that ‘The Medium is the Message’.