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Marshall McLuhan Biography

Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan CC (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian professor, philosopher, and public intellectual. His work is one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, McLuhan studied 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 in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life.

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Marshall McLuhan Quotes

Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally.

Change, Containers, Environment, Media, Process, Totally

TV acting is so extremely intimate, because of the peculiar involvement of the viewer with the completion or "closing" of the TV image, that the actor must achieve a great degree of spontaneous casualness that would be irrelevant in movie and lost on the stage. For the audience participates in the inner life of the TV actor as fully as in the outer life of the movie star. Technically, TV tends to be a close-up medium. The close-up that in the movie is used for shock is, on TV, a quite casual thing.

Acting, Completion, Extremely, Spontaneous, Stars, Television

It is possible to deal with the entire environment as a work of art.

Art, Deal, Deals, Environment, Possible

If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire.

Cities, City, Information, Men, Nomadic, Spiritual

Don't ask whether it is right or wrong. Instead try to find out what is going on.

Ask, Asks, Instead, Right, Trying, Wrong

We are all robots when uncritically involved with our technologies.

Involved, Robots, Technology, Uncritically

We go forward looking in the rearview mirror.

Forward, Looking, Mirror, Mirrors, Rearview, Rearview Mirror

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

Blow, Humorous, Man, Men, Name, Numbing

[Cameras] tend to turn people into things and the photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise and, [in the age of photography] the world itself becomes a sort of museum of objects that have been encountered before in some other museum and to say that the camera cannot lie is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name.

Cameras, Lying, Merchandise, Museums, Objects, Photography

Man works when he is partially involved. When he is totally involved he is at play or leisure.

Involved, Leisure, Man, Men, Play, Works

The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.

Easily, Intelligent, Light, Technology

The reader is the content of any poem or of the language he employs, and in order to use any of these forms, he must put them on.

Content, Employs, Language, Order, Poem, Use

The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement.

Alphabet, Detachment, Fostered, Print, Technology

Relativity theory forced the abandonment, in principle, of absolute space and absolute time.

Abandonment, Forced, Principle, Principles, Space, Time

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.

Big, Business, Discovery, Protected, Public, Science

On Spaceship Earth there are no passengers; everybody is a member of the crew. We have moved into an age in which everybody's activities affect everybody else.

Affect, Age, Earth, Spaceship, Spaceships

If it works, it's obsolete.

Creativity, Hard Work, Ideas, Obsolete, Works

I am curious to know what would happen if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to rearrange one's psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties.

Art, Blow, Extended, Namely, Order, Rearrange

Art is anything you can get away with.

Art, Artist, Away, Get Away

New media are new archetypes, at first disguised as degradations of older media.

Archetypes, Degradation, Degradations, Firsts, Media

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