Recommended Reading: Playboy Interview with McLuhan

by mtippett | August 22, 2007 at 10:02 pm

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About 15 years ago I had the pleasure of going to dinner with Marshall McLuhan's son who is regarded as one of the preeminent scholars of his father's work. If you haven't had any exposure to his ideas have a look at this interview from Playboy in1969. As an additional benefit, you'll also be able to honestly say that you read the magazine for the articles:

In 1961, the name of Marshall McLuhan was unknown to everyone but his English students at the University of Toronto--and a coterie of academic admirers who followed his abstruse articles in small-circulation quarterlies. But then came two remarkable books-- "The Gutenberg Galaxy" (1962) and "Understanding Media" (1964)--and the graying professor from Canada's western hinterlands soon found himself characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as "the hottest academic property around." He has since won a world-wide following for his brilliant--and frequently baffling--theories about the impact of the media on man; and his name has entered the French language as mucluhanisme, a synonym for the world of pop culture.