Marshall Mcluhan

Understanding Media: The Extension of Man.

Context & Review

According to Wikipedia, he was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. Althought the media theories which he brought out is quite controvertible, they are all worth to be refered into our present work.

His first published book named "The Mechanical Bride" in 1951, analyzed the popular culture at that time and the effect it would bring to the society. 11 years later, in 1962, his second book named "The Gutenberg Galaxy: The making of Typographic man" had been published. In this book, he analyzed the effects of mass media, especially printing press, and the word "Global Village" presented Mcluhan's different thought about this rapidly developing world.

The one we all should look up to is the third book from him, which is "Understanding Media: The Extension of Man." in 1964. The most famous phrase from him had been brought out: The medium is the message. "The media themselves should be the focus of study, not content they carry". In another word, campare to the content itself, the way or the path in which peiple review the content is more important. It means that: the reaction would be totally different when a joke were told by comic drawings or on the radio. Therefore, the term, "cool" and "hot" media appeared. "Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than a dialogue." Based on this theory, the phenomena of the films based on the comics nowadays is more reasonable and acceptable.