Marshall McLuhan was perhaps one of the best-known media theorists and critics of this era. A literary scholar from Canada, McLuhan became entrenched in American popular culture when he decided that this was the only way to understand his students at the University of Wisconsin. Until the publication of his best-known and most popular works, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan led a very ordinary academic life. His polemic prose (a style frequently compared to that of James Joyce) irritated many and inspired some. However cryptic, McLuhan’s outspoken and often outrageous philosophies of the “electric media” roused a popular discourse about the mass media, society, and culture. The pop culture motto “The medium is the message (and the massage)” and the term “global village” are pieces of what is known affectionately (and otherwise) as “McLuhanism.”

McLuhan was a technological determinist who credited the electronic media with the ability to exact profound social, cultural, and political influences. Instead of offering a thoughtful discourse regarding the positive or negative consequences of electric media, McLuhan preferred instead to pontificate about its inevitable impact, which was neither good nor bad but simply was. McLuhan was primarily concerned that people acknowledge and prepare for the technological transformation. He argued that people subscribe to a “rear-view mirror” understanding of their environment, a mode of thinking in which they do not foresee the arrival of a new social milieu until it is already in place. In McLuhan’s view, instead of “looking ahead,” society has tended to cling to the past. He wrote, “We are always one step behind in our view of the world,” and we do not recognize the technology that is responsible for the shift.

McLuhan first began to grapple with the relationship between technology and culture in The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951). However, he did not elaborate on their historical origins until the publication of The Gutenberg Galaxy, which traces the social evolution of modern humanity from tribal society. In his theory, this process encompasses four stages.

McLuhan defines tribal society as dependent on the harmonious balance of all senses. Tribal society was an oral culture; members used speech (an emotionally laden medium) to communicate. As a result, non-literate societies were passionate, involved, interdependent, and unified. The “acoustic space” that enveloped tribal society was eroded by the invention of the phonetic alphabet. McLuhan credits phonetic literacy for the dissolution of tribal society and the creation of “Western Man.”

Literacy inspired a more detached, linear perspective; the eye replaced the ear as the dominant sensory organ. Western Man evolved into “Gutenberg Man” with the arrival of the printing press in the 16th century. According to McLuhan, the printing press was responsible for such phenomena as the industrial revolution, nationalism, and perspectivity in art. The printing press eventually informed a “Mechanical Culture.”

The linearity and individualization characteristic of Mechanical Culture has been usurped by electric media. This process began with the invention of the telegraph. McLuhan considers the electric media as extensions of the entire nervous system. Television is perhaps the most significant of the electric media because of its ability to invoke multiple senses. Television, as well as future technologies, have the ability to “retribalize,” that is, to re-create the sensory unification characteristic of tribal society.

In perhaps his most popular work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan elaborates on the sensory manipulation of the electric media. Like most of his writing, Understanding Media has been criticized for its indigestible content and often paradoxical ideas. Ironically, it was this work that first captured the minds of the American public and triggered McLuhan’s metamorphosis from literary scholar into pop culture guru.

Understanding Media contains the quintessential McLuhanism, “The medium is the message.” McLuhan explains that the content of all electric media is insignificant; it is instead the medium itself that has the greatest impact on the sociocultural environment. This perspective has been contested by representatives of various schools in mass communication—in particular, empirical researchers have rejected McLuhan’s grand theorizing, whereas critical cultural theorists have argued that McLuhan undermines their agenda by discounting the power relationships inherent in and perpetuated by media content.

However, many judge McLuhan’s thesis to have certain merit. His focus on the “televisual experience” and the role of the medium within contemporary life has inspired much popular culture research. Within this same framework, some theorists ponder the impact of newer technologies, such as the Internet and high-definition television.

In Understanding Media, McLuhan proposes a controversial frame for judging media: “hot” and “cool.” These categorizations are puzzling, and contemporary technology may render them obsolete. In simplest terms, “hot” is exclusive, and “cool” is inclusive. Hot media are highly defined; there is little information to be filled in by the user. Radio is a hot medium; it requires minimal participation. Cool media, by contrast, are less defined and thus highly participatory because the user must “fill in the blanks.” Television is the ultimate “cool” medium because it is highly participatory. This categorization is extremely problematic to those who consider television viewing a passive activity.

To illustrate this concept, McLuhan analyzed the Kennedy–Nixon debates of 1960. Those who watched the debates on television typically judged Kennedy the winner; according to McLuhan, this televisual victory was due to the fact that Kennedy exuded an objective, disinterested, “cool” persona. However, Nixon, better suited for the “hot” medium of radio, was considered victorious by those who had listened to the debates on radio.

The McLuhanism with the loudest echo in contemporary popular culture is the concept of the “global village.” It is a metaphor most invoked by the telecommunications industry to suggest the ability of new technologies to link the world electronically. McLuhan’s once-outrageous vision of a postliterate society, one in which global consciousness was shaped by technology instead of verbalization, has been partially realized by the Internet. For McLuhan, television begins the process of retribalization through its ability to transcend time and space, enabling the person in New York, for example, to “experience” a foreign culture across the globe.

McLuhan contemplated the profound impact of electronic technology on society. Loved or loathed, his opinions penetrated academic, popular, and corporate spheres. Within the context of popular culture theorizing, McLuhan’s commentaries will remain part of history. Mass communication researchers continue to explore the relationship between media and society. In doing so, they delineate the significance of television in global culture and amplify the ideas McLuhan contributed to this discourse.