I’m ashamed to admit I really had no idea what Marshall McLuhan did until this week. I knew he was Canadian… some sort of media guy… I would have parroted, “the medium is the message”… that’s it.
But NOW! Now I know that Marshall McLuhan’s online-generated porn star name is Pud Bendover. And doesn’t that make all the difference?
I’ve just finished reading Douglas Coupland’s Marshall McLuhan biography, part of Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series. I quickly learned that way more people quote Marshall McLuhan than actually read him, because he’s apparently as dense as a non-flat-screen TV. This made me feel better about my omission.
Still, I may tackle his books at some point, because how can you not be interested in a man who predicted the internet, and predicted the privacy violations and watchdog states that have followed the development of media and technology? Pretty impressive for a 1960s “fuddy duddy,” as Douglas Coupland calls him.
Speaking of Coupland, this is as much a book about the biographer as it is about McLuhan. It includes excerpts from Coupland’s work, stories from his childhood, and a description of a lump of green tissue which he once sneezed into his palm.
By far the most entertaining biography I’ve ever read.