Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) was a Canadian media theorist and literary scholar whose work reshaped thinking about communication and culture. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, he studied at the University of Manitoba and later earned a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. McLuhan taught at several institutions, including the University of Toronto, where he became a prominent public intellectual. He argued that the forms of media—print, radio, television—profoundly influence perception and social organization, famously stating “the medium is the message.” In *The Gutenberg Galaxy* (1962) and *Understanding Media* (1964), he explored how electronic media compress distance into a “global village.”