Archive for the ‘Ideas’ Category


PUBLISHED: 2023-03-08 ARTICLES Editor’s Welcome Robert K. Logan  PDF The Joke as a Medium Adriana Braga, Robert K. Logan  PDF Contextualizing Marshall McLuhan Thomas Farrell  PDF Algorithm, Aphorism, and Alternatives Erik J. Gustafson  PDF Understanding the New Analogue Photography: Meanings, Methodologies and Aesthetics Laís Akemi Margadona  PDF Commodifying Taste: An Autoethnography of Free Labour, Exploitation and […]



An invitation from Paolo Granata to everyone interested in media in this digital era… I’d like to extend an invitation to you for a unique talk on journalism and media ecology that will be held on Wednesday, March 15th at 6:30 pm. The event will take place at Toronto Metropolitan University, Rogers Communications Centre, The Venn […]



You’ll find Included in this collection a selection of public presentations and thoughts on our spiritual and ecological crises, including reflections on Jacques Ellul, Simone Weil, Teilhard de Chardin, Marshall McLuhan and Anne Carson, lyrics for an unfinished rock opera, a dramatic homily on Harry Potter, meditations on Dune Part One, Nomadland and Eternals, poems […]



In his new course, U of Toronto prof Paolo Granata tackles the allegorical nature of Netflix mega-hit ‘Squid Game’ (photos courtesy Granata) By Courtney Shea, February 7, 2023 Hundreds of millions of people all over the world watched Netflix’s Squid Game, but only one turned the hit series into a university course. Paolo Granata is the […]



Media ecology is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry rooted in both North American and Continental European academic traditions that remains largely under the radar of contemporary scholars. This book aims to concisely and systematically survey a wide range of 20th-century thinkers who shared an approach to media studies as a complex system of relations and […]



Marshall McLuhan in an undated photo (Wikimedia Commons) Renée Darline Roden – December 15, 2022 Nick Ripatrazone’s new book on Marshall McLuhan, Digital Communion, arrived in my mailbox the day I presented a play about Marshall McLuhan at a conference on the Catholic imagination in Dallas, Tex. A fitting coincidence, if such things exist. I began writing […]



Best known as the amicable Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto when this film was made, Derrick de Kerckhove is at the core of a world think-tank dedicated to probing the rapid changes of our global village. The documentary Zulu Time follows this “wired man” in his […]



Andrew McLuhan in Prince Edward County at the Bloomfield Branch Library beside the McLuhan collection. By Sharon Harrison County resident Andrew McLuhan spoke to a small audience at the Bloomfield branch library about growing up as the grandson of Marshall McLuhan, where he outlined the path he is navigating to continue his renowned grandfather’s important […]



DAVID SOBELMAN 1950-2022 It is with sadness that we share the news that our admired and dear friend, David Sobelman, died at his home in Oakville on November 7, 2022, while recuperating from surgery. David was predeceased by his beloved wife, poet and professor, Rishma Dunlop. Born in Haifa of an old French Jewish family, […]



A special talk with Philippine ABS-CBN news correspondent and McLuhan Award for Investigative Journalism Christian Esguerra. Date & Time: Tuesday, November 8, 2022 – 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST Location: Rogers Communications Centre (The Venn, RCC 103) 80 Gould Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2M7 About this event Join the School of Journalism at Toronto […]