Heer, Jeet. "Divine Inspiration." THE WALRUS (July / August 2011).

McLuhan has strong claims to being the most important thinker Canada has ever produced. In his first book, The Mechanical Bride, published in 1951, he established himself in the emerging field of cultural studies by offering a caustic survey of the dehumanizing impact of popular magazines, advertising, and comic strips. By the 1960s, he had widened his lens to examine the power of media as a whole. In The Gutenberg Galaxy, he offered a map of modern history by highlighting the hitherto-unexplored effect of print in shaping how we think. This was followed by Understanding Media, which prophesied that new electronic media would rewire human consciousness just as effectively as print once did, giving birth to a “global village” where people all over the world would be linked via communication technology.

McLuhan has also long been a fiercely polarizing figure, especially during the height of his fame in the 1960s and ’70s. For instance, the American novelist and social critic Tom Wolfe praised him in the most extravagant terms: “At the turn of the nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth there was Darwin in biology, Marx in political science, Einstein in physics, and Freud in psychology. Since then there has been only McLuhan in communications studies.” Meanwhile, the German essayist and poet Hans Enzensberger denounced McLuhan as a “reactionary” and a “charlatan,” a shallow theorist who attempted to “dissolve all political problems in smoke” and promised “the salvation of man through the technology of television.”

One of the most contentious aspects of McLuhan’s life and work was his devout Catholicism, which some critics saw as antithetical to his academic pursuits. . .

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2011.07-media-divine-inspiration/1/

Cfp: "Space, Place and the McLuhan Legacy," Twelfth Annual Convention, Media Ecology Association, University of Alberta, June 23–26, 2011.

McLuhan gave much attention to the changing environment of the city in the wake of technological change. As he stated in an article published in Canadian Architect in June 1961,“[t]oday the entire human community is being translated into ‘auditory space,’ or into that ‘field of simultaneous relations,’by electric broadcasting. It behooves the architect and town planner, above all, to know what this means” (p. 52).

For McLuhan, the city is a “technological composite,” a patchwork of media and technologies built up over time and space. In this context, new technologies may be imagined as “punctuations” in our historical landscape, inaugurating irreversible cultural, social, and economic changes. Locating the MEA convention in the heart of Edmonton’s urban centre will provide an occasion to reflect on the significance of this Western Canadian city in shaping McLuhan’s early explorations of perspective as a fundamental artistic and communicational principle.

The 12th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association will include papers, panels, and creative projects exploring space, place, and city in the context of the McLuhan intellectual legacy. How might media ecology inform today’s architecture and city planning? What is the relationship between urban and virtual media realities? What is the meaning of the city in the “global village”? How do new media technologies intertwine, intersect, and reform today’s urban landscapes?

A suite of themes have been developed for the Centenary, presented in the form of five probes or heuristics, which McLuhan often used in his teaching and public addresses:

• Media as extensions of the human senses
• Media as “punctuations” in history (bias of time, bias of space)
• Figure and ground as a means of achieving a deep understanding of changes in perception occasioned by new media
• The city as a technological composite
• The city as classroom

Visit: http://mea2011.org/.

Farrell, Thomas J. "Who Was Marshall McLuhan, and Why Is He Important Today?" OPEDNEWS January 14, 2011.

With the publication of two books in the early 1960s, McLuhan catapulted to extraordinary fame, seemingly out of nowhere. In the 1950s he had not been widely known. However, he had been known to a small group of alert admirers. But along with his fame in the 1960s and 1970s came controversy and criticism. At times, the criticism was cogent and convincing. However, the criticism directed at him was frequently off target. In any event, many of his critics wanted to throw out the baby with the bath water, as we say. This is an understandable temptation. But it is a temptation we must guard ourselves against even today as we try to sort out the wheat from the chaff in McLuhan's thought. To be sure, there is a certain amount of chaff in McLuhan's thought that should be discarded. But the wheat can nourish our thought and reflection.

McLuhan did not live to see the time when personal computers became as common in North America as television sets and radios and telephones and movies and audio recordings and sound amplification systems had become by the 1960s. Nor did he live to see the Internet. Nevertheless, once we have sorted out the wheat from the chaff in McLuhan's thought, the wheat can help feed and nurture our thinking about computers and the Internet and other forms of new media that had not yet fully emerged in his lifetime.

Read the rest here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-Was-Marshall-McLuhan--by-Thomas-Farrell-110111-916.html.

Cfp: "McLuhan's Philosophy of Media," Centennial Conference, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, October 26-28, 2011.

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980): media theorist, cultural critic, provoker. But undoubtedly influential. In 2011, McLuhan would have celebrated his 100th birthday. A perfect moment to look back as well as ahead. During this interdisciplinary conference, we will discuss McLuhan's ideas from different perspectives and traditions, but at the same time highlight an aspect of McLuhan that until now has been underexposed: his philosophy of media.

Keynote Speakers: Eric McLuhan, Robert K. Logan, Paul Levinson, Graham Harman, Peter-Paul Verbeek.

Visit the conference website here: http://www.mcluhancentennial.eu/.

"Marshall McLuhan in a POMO World: Is the Medium the Message?," Department of Rhetoric, Writing and Communications, University of Winnipeg, October 14-16, 2010.

Thirty years after his death, Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) is widely known for his aphorisms about electronic media (having called the world a “global village” and the medium “the message”). Many consider him to have shaped twentieth-century thinking about technology and communication, and as technology continues its march there has been a resurgence of interest in his ideas and work. Our conference -- convened in Winnipeg, where McLuhan received both his B.A. and M.A. -- invites you to consider how McLuhan’s ideas resonate in media-saturated post-modern culture.

Other topics related to language and culture, especially those related to media and communications, are also welcome.

Keynote Speakers:

Douglas Coupland, award-winning author of McLuhan
Robert Logan, physicist, media ecologist, author, McLuhan collaborator

See the Call for Papers here: http://rhetoric.uwinnipeg.ca/McLuhan_in_a_POMO_World/CALL_FOR_PROPOSALS.pdf.