Born Herbert Marshall McLuhan on July 21, 1911 in Edmonton, Alberta, McLuhan entered the University of Manitoba in 1928 and left in 1935 with his MA. He then studied literature at Cambridge University and earned his PhD in 1942. He taught at the University of Toronto, and in 1963, he became the first director of the Center for Culture and Technology, a center created specifically for McLuhan and his work. He died on New Years Eve in 1980. (McLuhan.ca) Following his death, McLuhan was dismissed as a unique academic whose ideas were not much more than eccentric and outdated. Howe

Another of McLuhan’s theories is the idea that advancement in communication technology has created (and is creating) a ‘global village’. Technologies can be comparatively applied to our human senses, especially sound and sight. The telephone and radio extend the lengths of hearing as the television extends vision. Technology alters senses and perceptions steadily and without resistance, and McLuhan theorizes that this progressive change affects our learning strategies and information processing. (Symes)

Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of McLuhan’s work is that it accounts for technology advancement beyond his time. His theories were so contemporary that they are only recently achieving their full potential. It seems McLuhan was ahead of his time, as most considered his ideas to be somewhat bizarre at their initialization, and now the basis of his media theory analysis is well respected and studied. McLuhan detaches media from culture in an attempt to reveal its effects on society, and his theories are proving to be continually applicable as communication technology advances.

Adversely, a hot medium requires minimal participation of the audience. Movies, photographs and the radio are examples of this category of media. A hot medium usually focuses on one sense, and thus provides enough information directed acutely at that sense that there is little left to be filled in by the audience, because there is a greater definition. McLuhan argues that people learn better from a cool medium, since it requires more active participation; however, this argument has been met with severe controversy. One of the problems with this argument is that certain types of media may fall in between the definition of hot or cool, specifically the Internet. (Tapley) McLuhan continues to apply his theory of hot and cool media other cultural aspects, such as countries and their history. He considers the past ‘mechanical’ age as hot and the more modern ‘television’ age as cool, as society is more information driven and ‘free’ than in the past. (McLuhan 27)

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