The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology started in 1963 as the Centre for Culture and Technology, initially a card pinned to the door of

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...

's office in the English department at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

. In 1965, McLuhan draft Constitution for the center read: "The Centre is established to advance the understanding of the origins and effects of technology" to "investigation into the psychic and social consequences of technologies."

History

Initially the centre had no organized program for research or teaching, but gained in prestige from the worldwide popularity of ''Understanding Media'' (1964) and grew in McLuhan's last decade in Toronto, assisted by Derrick de Kerckhove and McLuhan's son Eric, who became a director of the McLuhan Program International. In 1994, the McLuhan Program became a part of the

Faculty of Information Faculty may refer to: * Faculty (academic staff), the academic staff of a university (North American usage) * Faculty (division), a division within a university (usage outside of the United States) * Faculty (instrument), an instrument or warrant ...

. The program's curriculum is based on the works of

and other media theorists. The first director was literacy scholar and

OISE Oise ( ; ; pcd, Oése) is a department in the north of France. It is named after the river Oise. Inhabitants of the department are called ''Oisiens'' () or ''Isariens'', after the Latin name for the river, Isara. It had a population of 829,419 ...

Professor David R. Olsen. From 1983 until 2008, the McLuhan Program was under the direction of Derrick de Kerckhove who was McLuhan's student and translator. From 2008 through 2015 Professor Dominique Scheffel-Dunand of

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...

served as Director of the Program. In 2009, the faculty of information launched the Coach House Institute (CHI) as a clearly defined research unit under which the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology now operates. In 2011, at the time of his centenary, the Centre established a Marshall McLuhan Centenary Fellowship program in his honour, and each year appoints up to four fellows for a maximum of two years. In 2016 under the interim director,

Seamus Ross Seamus Ross (born November 12, 1957) is a digital humanities and digital curation academic and researcher based in Canada. He is the son of James Francis Ross, a philosopher, and Kathleen Fallon Ross, a nurse. After graduating from the William Pen ...

(2015-2016), the institute receive approval for its renaming as the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology in recognition of McLuhan's intellectual contributions. The McLuhan Program is now subsumed under this centre. In 2017, Sarah Sharma, an Associate Professor of Media Theory, began a five-year term as director of the Centre (2017- ).

Media experiments

Between the 1950s and the early 1960s, the center conducted an experiment that compared the effectiveness of TV,

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

lecture A lecture (from Latin ''lēctūra'' “reading” ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical inform ...

s and print in learning.McLuhan (1964) ''Understanding Media'', ch.31 ''Television'' The results were that the students retained more information from radio and television than they did from live lectures or printed material. The experiment was replicated by Roach, Aman, Appleton, Bellyea and Lips. And then by Williams, Paul and Ogilvie.Siegel, Howard B. ''McLuhan, Mass Media, and Education'', in The journal of experimental education. 1973, Vol.41(3), p.68-70

References

External links

* {{Marshall McLuhan Information schools Marshall McLuhan Media studies University of Toronto