Presents the views of two experts on McLuhan's effect on communications theory and research. Levinson maintains that McLuhan performed the Socratic job of identifying the important issues in the communications field, while Gordon argues that McLuhan was a pseudointellectual known more for his guts than his talent. (MER)

Author examines the social foundations of McLuhan's concepts and analyses how McLuhan expanded social theory. (HB)

Designed to serve as a casebook for introductory college-level English courses, this collection of 33 articles critically reviews the works of Marshall McLuhan on the effects of media. Each of the reviews is followed by questions designed to encourage the student to concentrate on the more important points of the review and of McLuhan's ideas.…

John McCain's announcement in late August that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska would be his running mate got the attention of the news media, to say the least. The public heard more than enough from pundits, politicos, and pollsters. But they heard little from another group with opinions aplenty: scholars who specialize in how the news and…

A historical review of the background of the theories and observations of Marshall McLuhan demonstrates that these ideas arose from or were first articulated by several antecedent social scientists. Some of McLuhan's ideas arise directly from the linguistic observations of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Other ideas show signs of having been influenced by…

The major principles of Marshall McLuhan are of great value to the field of speech. Four major principles are evident in McLuhan's work: the media is a broad explanatory basis for historical and cultural change; media is an extension of man; media can be classified as hot or cool; and man explains change by rearview mirrorism. The value of…

Presents some of the more recent perceptual discoveries of Marshall McLuhan as they relate to new media technologies. (FL)

In this article, we chose the musical form of a sonata to examine tetrads, a simple four-fold structure that Marshall McLuhan coined and employed to describe various technologies. Tetrads, as cognitive models, are used to refine, focus, or discover entities in cultures and technologies, which are hidden from view in the psyche. Tetradic logic…

Looks at McLuhan's method of exploration. Considers why he dismisses logic and traditional rationality, how he supports his stance, and why his contribution to communications media theory is not diminished by his attempt to avoid logical accountability. (PD)

Attributes McLuhan's theories about media to his interpretation of history as an interpenetrating sequence of three processes: all history originated in oral societies, which were fragmented by literacy, but electronic media are returning society to that original state through implosion. Reviews the historical, literary, and aesthetic sources for…

This paper explores briefly the perspectives of McLuhan as seer, as culturologist, as communication theorist, and as rhetorical theorist. As a social prophet or seer, McLuhan was a major force during the 1960's; he helped us discover social and psychic targets in time to prepare to cope with them. By realizing and interpreting the effects of mass…

Marshall McLuhan's belief that our electric age is moving away from literacy entails unconvincing theories about the relationship of man to communications media. One such doctrine is that society has always been influenced more by the nature of the media than by the content of the message communicated. McLuhan divides media into two types: hot…

Marshall McLuhan, who has gained a reputation as an enemy of books is, in fact, a man of the book as any librarian. In tracing the evidence of McLuhan's concern for the future of the book, we can see him as one who has, perhaps, a greater perception of the value of books and libraries for civilization, than many librarians. (31 references)…

Twenty-one critical essays on the ideas and works of Marshall McLuhan are offered in this review. In the course of the essays, McLuhan is characterized alternately as a genius, an extrapolator, and an oracle; a defender of the choice of choicelessness; a generalizer who rearranges, misinterprets, and misreads the facts to support his theses; an…

Evaluates McLuhan's contribution to the theoretical literature on rhetoric and communication. Reviews some of the ontological and normative tenets of his early and late periods in order to place him within contemporary intellectual circles. (PD)