earch for “Marshall McLuhan”on YouTube and you’ll find a collection of interviews,lectures,commentaries andmovie clips (including his famous cameo in Woody Allen’s 1977 classic,Annie Hall) posted by people all over the world.The results have a certain eeriness to them,considering the content of McLuhan’s predictions of the future of media:“The nextmedium….will transform television into an art form.”And“(in the future we will) create the world in the image of a global village.” As a teacher,scholar,critic,futurist and author,Marshall McLuhan gave us an innovative way of examining our world and our society. And although his theories were both admired and questioned,45 years after his arrival at the University of Toronto,his seminal work on mass media continues to berelevant,providing today’s students of communications and information technology an enduring context. —
Anjali Baichwal