Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) spent nearly all of his life in Canada. Born in Edmonton on July 21, he was raised in Winnipeg and developed an early interest in engineering. There, he earned an M.A. in English, then went to Cambridge University and received additional B.A. and M.A. degrees, and also a Ph.D. (English). A widely published author of more than thirty books, one of which has been translated into more than twenty-five languages, McLuhan taught for three decades at the University of Toronto and died in Toronto on December 31.

McLuhan virtually invented the field of media studies and its relation to culture and society. McLuhan argued that the initial content of any new medium is always a preexisting medium (so radio, for example, takes over from the music hall and the newspaper; TV subsumes radio drama and film; and so on), so that...