1. Icon: Marshall McLuhan
During my bachelor in Switzerland we had a guest speaker from Canada, his name is Marcel Danesi and he is Professor of semiotic at the University of Toronto. During his lecture he talked about Marshall McLuhan, one of the first sociologist of mass media communication, who actually was one of his lecturer. I already knew him, but Danesi persuaded me to read at least one of his book by describing McLuhan as an inspiring and genial professor who was criticized by a lot of academics, but didn’t really care about it. He was very eccentric, and his style of writing was so particular that sometimes you have to read the sentences three or four times before really understand what he was trying to convey. Generally, he analysed the passage from the old media (mechanic) to the new technologies (electronic) and described these impacts on our lives.
A Google doodle's tribute to McLuhan
McLuhan wrote several essays on mass communication and the role of new media in the 20th century. The most famous one is Understanding Media: the extension of man (1964), which contains the iconic quote “the medium is the message” and other relevant contents which can be considered as “predictions” of the future of mediatic world. E.g. he coined the term “global village”: in the era of globalization we can communicate easily thanks to the new media, and the world is interconnected as if it was a village.
Without doubt, McLuhan theorized other considerable concepts, at the point that he became a popular figure outside of the academic field.
McLuhan appearing on the Woody Allen movie “Annie Hall”