Marshall McLuhan

In this course

McLuhan's media theory provides a foundational framework for understanding how technological change reshapes human perception and aesthetic experience, a concern central to tracing AI's role in restructuring our relationship to space, time, and embodiment. The readings invoke McLuhan's 1964 work as a historical anchor for examining how different "mediation capabilities" condition what kinds of consciousness and aesthetic meaning-making become possible in computational environments. His insight that media are extensions of human faculties becomes legible when the course examines how human-computer interaction inherits and transforms Duchamp's participatory aesthetic ideals through networked telecommunication.

Background

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. Raised in Winnipeg, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as "the father of media studies".

Mentioned in 2 readings