Talk:Marshall McLuhan

Former good article nomineeMarshall McLuhan was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 8, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed
On this day...A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on July 21, 2011.

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2022 and 16 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jessejoseph (article contribs).

Wikipedia Ambassador Program assignment

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Georgetown University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

Above message substituted from {{WAP assignment}} on 14:34, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

****SOMETHING MISSING HERE****

Hi, I don't know the solution but thought the editors of the page should know that someone has added some text saying ****SOMETHING MISSING HERE**** in the middle of the content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.186.212.26 (talk) 01:12, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting us know. This problem has already been taken care of. Most of the time, when a page gets a lot of exposure, there is a flurry of attempts to improve it or vandalize it. Most of the vandal edits don't last more than a few minutes. — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 07:16, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Grammar

Second paragraph of "Legacy": The text "who would later wrote" should be "who would later write" or "who later wrote"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.134.106.245 (talk) 13:51, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 21 July 2017

Change "Massage" to "Message" in "The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967)". It is in the hyperlinked contents. Thank you. 47.158.44.251 (talk) 13:57, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: PLEASE NOTE: "The Medium is the MASSAGE" is the correct title of the book. regards, DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 15:19, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 21 July 2017

Change "The main concept of McLuhan's argument (later elaborated upon in The Medium is the Massage) is that new technologies..." to "The main concept of McLuhan's argument (later elaborated upon in The Medium is the Message) is that new technologies...".

Note: Change from "Massage" to "Message". 204.27.169.105 (talk) 15:13, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: PLEASE NOTE: "The Medium is the MASSAGE" is the correct title of the book. regards, DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 15:19, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Heritage Minutes

There's a Historica Canada Heritage Minute dedicated to Marshall McLuhan which may be useful to add to the External Links section.

https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/marshall-mcluhan

Smelsela (talk) 16:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling error

Is it the title of his book "The Medium is the Massage" or Message? Pick one that is correct as it appears with both spellings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.216.144.200 (talk) 19:17, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The title of the 1967 book is The Medium Is the Massage, a pun on "the medium is the message" which is not the title of a book but a phrase McLuhan coined earlier. I didn't see "The Medium Is the Message" given as a book title in the article (but maybe someone already fixed it. It is a bit confusing). ---Sluzzelin talk 02:36, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Woody Allen Appearance

There has to be room in this article for the fact that McLuhan appeared as himself in the Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall. That must be something of an apotheosis in pop cultural terms. Get Jordan Peterson a cameo in a Tarantino pic and you'll ave an analog.

@Christofurio: It is mentioned in the life and career section. Hrodvarsson (talk) 02:24, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Historical accuracy

However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives

This is a revisionist take in some sense. I was deep into McLuhan in the late 1980s, and the tech community at the time was very much heavily into his philosophy. In other words, the idea that interest waned in McLuhan isn’t true. It’s just that mainstream information technology at the time was business and finance-oriented. Computer science departments were filled to the brim with students wearing suits and ties, not philosophers of science wishing to understand how the internet was going to change culture and the media. This is one reason why, quite ironically and paradoxically, some of the biggest roadblocks and opponents to early internet adoption were the mainstream tech behemoths (Microsoft, etc.) They didn’t care about McLuhan’s vision until they could make a buck from it. For this reason, the above statement reflects their perspective, not that of the wider community. It would take a really deep dive into old periodicals to fix this mess, but the people at the vanguard of technology never lost interest in his work and perspectives. I should also note that the statement that "interest was renewed" is even more incorrect when one considers that students of other disciplines, such as media, journalism, and broadcasting, were learning about McLuhan and his legacy before the rise of the internet. To summarize and conclude: I don’t know where this idea that interest waned and was later renewed in McLuhan comes from. It’s simply not true. The only thing I can surmise is that some writer made it up. Given that McLuhan was a hero of the counterculture of the 1960s, one wonders if the idea that interest in his work waned was a reactionary talking point from conservatives in the early 1980s. Viriditas (talk) 01:31, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Cultural Impact

McLuhan was relevant enough at the time of writing that he is referenced in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. In the first page of Chapter 5, the narrator notes that Kilgore Trout was supposed to "take part in a symposium out there entitled 'The Future of the American Novel in the Age of McLuhan.'" I thought this was a significant enough reference to be worth including in that list. Gjungwir (talk) 00:37, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Erroneous Statement About "The Medium Is the Message"

This article claims that McLuhan coined the phrase "The Medium Is the Message" in 1964. This is very erroneous. McLuhan frequently used that phrase starting in 1958. 2601:192:7F:E10:4D4D:AA08:A293:D458 (talk) 16:38, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Early works and influences" - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

This section has three paragraphs addressing the question of whether or not McLuhan was influenced by de Chardin --apparently because Tom Wolfe said that he was in a 1999 lecture. Is this a question that's discussed a lot by McLuhan scholars? If so the article doesn't indicate that. If not, the coverage seems excessive. 2600:4041:4A9:9A00:F9A2:186E:A14F:FF58 (talk) 14:47, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, McLuhan scholars continue to discuss Teilhard's influence on McLuhan. That McLuhan himself discussed this in his public and private writing and communications justifies keeping it in the piece - these are reliably sourced. I added a reference and clarified the wording. Tvoz/talk 00:43, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But did he like butterflies? Main article Doesn’t belong in a Catholicism link

McLuan’s conversion to Catholicism (from context, I take it Roman, not Orthodox) is about as important as whether or not he liked Lepidoptera in terms of his impact on society - mainly in the development of 20th Century Communications Theory, the work he will be most remembered for. It was important to his personal life, possibly the development of his theories, but belongs deep in a biography section and not as part of a collection of his faith’s theology and philosophy during (and not mentioned) the upheaval in the Church from Pius and his long-debated connections with Hitler, to John 23’s desire to shake up and reshape the institution, first by restoring legitimacy to the Papal name John, 500 years after J22 led a post J23 scholar, Umberto Eco, perhaps best known for his novel “The Name of the Rose”, in which the narrator hopes no one will take that Pontifical name again, followed by the event commonly called “Vatican II”. But the main article on the life works of McLuhan should be a considerably longer piece on the growth of his theories from “The Gutenberg Galaxy” through “Media, Hot and Cold”, “The Medium is the Massage(sic)” and his demonstration of many of his thoughts in his brief appearance in Writer/Director Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall”. I am no McLuhan scholar, and unfit to write such a piece,(don’t you wish real life weren’t like this) and his influence in the USA (still very strong in Canada) seems to have declined with the 21st Century. But he is still a major figure, and his faith had much less importance to his life’s work, its interpretation and (probably why he appeared in Annie, chronic misinterpretation and misuse during his lifetime. It’s an element, but hardly the focus of his scholarship - and this “main” article should be, if not a small portion of a main article, then a branch. He will be remembered as a Communications Theorist, hardly for his conversion, and definitely not as a theologian Linguistic Irregular (talk) 06:06, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the infobox about Catholic philosophy is overkill - it slipped in without discussion several years ago and I for one missed it and am removing it now. But note that this piece is a biography of the man, not an article about his work as a communications theorist. Obviously that is a major portion of the piece, but this biography is about the whole person and his conversion and life as a Catholic did indeed play an important role in his life and influenced his thinking (unlike whatever his feelings about butterflies were) and is appropriately featured in the "life and career" section. (And as a side note, in fact McLuhan is increasingly important in the US as well as internationally in the age of social media as referenced in the article and beyond.) Tvoz/talk 20:08, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Marshall_McLuhan