Marshall McLuhan

The CBC archives has a lot of clips of Marshall McLuhan, who would have turned 100 today, here.  Considering that he was ubiquitous public intellectual during the ’60s and ’70s, it's surprising how far McLuhan's receded from the public consciousness today.  Aside from a few key insights and slogans, many of his ideas don't seem to have worn terribly well—and the whole hot and cool media distinction never seemed to make a lot of sense to begin with, as Alan Jacobs discusses in this rather critical article.  Here's a 1968 conversation between McLuhan and Norman Mailer: