John Culkin Award for Outstanding Media Praxis
"We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't a fish." — Marshall McLuhan
As he lay dying on the last day of 1980, Marshall McLuhan had every reason to believe he would soon be forgotten. His ideas about technology's role in society had been dismissed by many Western intellectuals, and his beloved study centre at the University of Toronto had been shut down. His books weren't selling, and the mass media — having built him up as the oracle of the age — had long since lost interest. Worst of all, a massive stroke earlier that year had left him unable to speak.
It was a tragically perfect end for a misunderstood prophet, rich in both pathos and irony: CNN was born the same year McLuhan died, and the world would soon come to understand, in a very visceral way, two of his most famous and puzzling phrases — "the global village" and "the medium is the message."
