Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category
The University of Michigan iSchool – North Quad This is an excerpt from a letter dated July 19, 2018, addressed to Michael McLuhan and signed by the University of Michigan’s Provost and Dean of the iSchool. The H. Marshall McLuhan Collegiate Professorship in Digital Media, School of Information H. Marshall McLuhan periodically visited the University […]
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Tags: academic, culture, education, media, university
Marshall McLuhan was a Catholic, having converted from the Baptist and Methodist faiths of his parents in 1937 at the age of 26. But is his body of work on media theory essentially Catholic in its scope and substance? Partially it certainly is. In his late teens and 20s he was influenced by Thomist philosophy […]
Filed under: Academic, Articles, Commentary, Ideas, Media Ecology, New Media, Religion, St Michael's College | 2 Comments
Tags: academic, articles, communication, culture, ideas, media ecology, religion, Toronto, university
This is a non-scholarly journalistic look back at Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. It is mostly an appreciation but it also includes some cutting comments about McLuhan’s “obscure” writing style and criticism of McLuhan’s “matrix” structure for the book. He should have read the page that is untitled and unpaginated that precedes […]
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Tags: articles, communication, culture, Gutenberg Galaxy, ideas, media ecology, print
The Medium Is the Monster: Canadian Adaptations of Frankenstein & the Discourse of Technology
What do Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Canadian popular culture have in common? This is the question that Mark A. McCutcheon seeks to answer in his new book, The Medium Is the Monster: Canadian Adaptations of Frankenstein and the Discourse of Technology, published in 2018 by Athabasca University Press. In this unique and penetrating analysis, McCutcheon […]
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Tags: academic, books, communication, culture, ideas, media ecology, technology
(Click on the above box or any image for an expanded view) AUTHORS Julia M. Hildebrand (Drexel University) and Barry Vacker (Temple University) 1. INTRODUCTION Anthropocene — Mediacene. Layers of fossils — Layers of media technology. Ways of living — Ways of seeing. If we are in the Anthropocene, then how can we not be in the Mediacene? […]
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Tags: communication, culture, ideas, Internet, media ecology, technology
The celebrity has replaced the hero in our image-based politics—and now we’ve got one on steroids. By Arthur W. Hunt III • April 4, 2018 During the heat of the of the 2016 presidential campaign some thoughtful observers mused that if Donald Trump became president, the White House would become a TV reality show. The national news cycle […]
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Tags: academic, articles, communication, culture, ideas, media ecology, TV
Marshall McLuhan wrote in his Introduction to the Second Edition of Understanding Media: “The power of the arts to anticipate future social and technological developments, by a generation and more, has long been recognized. In this century Ezra Pound called the artist ‘the antennae of the race’. Art as radar acts as ‘an early alarm […]
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Tags: academic, articles, communication, culture, ideas, literature, media ecology
Message delivered: Tarragon to premiere long-awaited Marshall McLuhan play, The Message The February 22, 2018 issue of the Toronto Globe & Mail newspaper reports that a play by Canadian playwright Jason Sherman titled The Message that had originally been scheduled for their 2003 – 04 season is one of the seven Canadian plays to be staged […]
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Tags: communication, culture, McLuhan, media, theatre, Toronto
Mobile Phone Evolution 1992 – 2014 This is a short excerpt from an excellent wide-ranging and philosophical essay about Marshall McLuhan, his main ideas, and mobile phones that deserves to be read in full. It is also well-written. Follow the link at the bottom to do so. The Mobile Phone By Peter Benson … Let us consider […]
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Tags: academic, articles, communication, culture, global village, ideas, Internet, media ecology
A Radical Updating of Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is The Massage
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Douglas Coupland and Shumon Basar discuss tomorrow via the spreads from their radical artist’s book, Age Of Earthquakes April 6, 2015 “We see this as a kind of DIY manual.” Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine co-director, and arguably his generations finest curator, is very excited. He’s describing his new book, a radical updating of […]
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Tags: books, communication, culture, ideas, Internet, media ecology, technology