Six ways to get aquainted with Marshall McLuhan’s legacy
By Evan Andrew Mackay
Yet another memorable (if cryptic) Marshall McLuhan quote (Image: Andra Mihali)
A hundred years after the birth of Marshall McLuhan, “prophet of the Information Age” and Canada’s most baffling icon, his legacy is being celebrated this year around the world with McLuhan 100, especially in Toronto, where he made his home and his mark on the world. In preparation for Monday's event at the Toronto Reference Library, McLuhan 100: Toronto's Future in McLuhan's Global Village, here are six ways to get a better understanding of McLuhan.
1. Only got a minute? Review that history minute you must have seen on TV a while back.
2. Got three minutes (or 93)? Famous for being as quotable as he was misunderstood, McLuhan did a cameo in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, which might make you laugh as well as think. Allen attended one of McLuhan’s Monday Night Seminars at University of Toronto (as did Pierre Trudeau, John Lennon and Yoko Ono).
3. If you have a bunch of minutes, have a look at the CBC archives, which have several TV and radio clips of McLuhan.
4. If the weather is right, you could do the McLuhan Walking Tour after downloading the audio tracks to your cell phone or MP3 player.
5. Or, if you’re still stuck in the Print Age, you can read about McLuhan in the summer issue of The Walrus and the autumn issue of U of T Magazine.
6. If you have lots of time, you can have a go at some of McLuhan’s books (for a guy who declared that “the age of writing has passed,” he sure wrote enough of them). The good thing is that if McLuhan is to be believed, you’ll only have to read the right hand pages.
McLuhan 100: Toronto's Future in McLuhan's Global Village, Toronto Reference Library, Sept. 26
Email
Print
Feed
Comments to the Post City Magazines website do not reflect the opinions of the company or the author of the article in question. We do not edit comments for grammar, length or clarity. Offensive comments will be removed at the discretion of Post City Magazines. To read all of our website policies, click here.
Reader Comments:
Here's an even better to get acquainted with Marshall McLuhan's legacy. Subscribe to the McLuhan Galaxy blog, which has been designated as the official blog of the McLuhan Estate. The URL is http://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/ . You might also wish to join the McLuhan Legacy Network (MLN). See http://mcluhan.net/about .
I think my favourite comment on the occasion is a tweet that read, "If Marshall McLuhan were alive today, he'd be running around kicking everyone in the balls and screaming 'I told you so!'"
As it is he is kicking himself in his afterlife balls thinking that little putz Zuckerberg got so rich manipulating everyones desperation to be noticed!
Hank