Today I was driving home from a mini-vacation in Chicago, visiting some good friends and family, including my god-daughter. When we were about half an hour from home, the radio station that we were listening to was finally cutting out. Although I could have just used one of our preset buttons for one of our local favorite radio stations I used the scan button. I stopped on some talk radio station and started listening. The host was talking about Marshall McLuhan, who would have been 100 this month. I never heard of this person, although I am sure his name has popped up before.
After listening to the little news article about him, I decided to look up more information. What a guy Mr. McLuhan was. He was ahead of his time with his thinking back in the 60's. His thoughts and words on 21st Century Education (Skills) even though it wasn't known yet sits in my head right now.
Marshall thought technology profoundly shapes an individual's and society's self-conception and realization. Marshall even predicted what the World Wide Web would become. Even using the term "Surfing."
Today we talk about the Global Nation and how our students need to be involved with other students, but back in 1968 Marshall wrote the book "War and Peace in the Global Village."
I look forward of reading more about Marshall McLuhan and reading his books to see how they are relevant still today. I will leave you with this quote, "the printing press, the computer, and television are not therefore simply machines which convey information. They are metaphors through which we conceptualize reality in one way or another. They will classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, argue a case for what it is like. Through these media metaphors, we do not see the world as it is. We see it as our coding systems are. Such is the power of the form of information."
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