A Brill Calendar: July 21

Few aphorisms became as quickly generally known as ‘The Medium is the Message’.

It may be seen as a tribute to continuity in the Western intellectual tradition that this saying – frequently disguised as slogan, half-truth or sales-talk – has not been coined by a computer wizard or a publishing tycoon but by a scholar, educator and theorist: Herbert Marshall McLuhan (Edmonton, Alberta July 21 1911 – Toronto December 31 1980).

When he became full Professor of English Literature at the University of Toronto in 1952, the noun ‘computer’ still carried more often than not the meaning ‘someone who computes’.

Only ten years later, in 1962, Professor McLuhan published what is perhaps not his most widely read work, but certainly the most seminal among them: ‘The Gutenberg Galaxy’. Its main message is that the very nature of typography has resulted in a very special state of consciousness in members of societies dependent on this technology; and that a metamorphosis into a world in which electronic dissemination predominates would result in a new human awareness.

Two years later on, in 1964, ‘Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man’ came off the press, confirming McLuhan in the role of a prophet leading his people to a land promising many things to a dedicated group of followers, friends and aficionado’s. The year before, he had been appointed as Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at Toronto.

Whoever knows a little about the state-of-the-art of information technology in the 1960s, will appreciate Marshall McLuhan’s power as a visionary; but it is seldom that the disappearance of the printed book was propounded and surmised on more debatable grounds: McLuhan belonged to the digital computer scene of the ‘sixties, and was in no position to stand above it.