The Extensions of Men: The Correspondence of Marshall McLuhan and Edward T. Hall

Abstract

Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian media guru, and Edward T. Hall (1959), the American anthropologist who wrote The Silent Language and founded the field of intercultural communication, exchanged over 133 letters during the period between 1962 and 1976. Their correspondence provides insight into the evolution of such important ideas as the conception of the media as extensions of man, media technological determinism, and McLuhan's dictum that the medium is the message. Although these ideas are usually attributed to McLuhan, who wrote about them in two important books, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1965), Hall had considerable influence in their development. Although Harold Innis is widely acknowledged for shaping McLuhan as a communication technological determinist, the exchange between Hall and McLuhan helped develop the latter's theory about the impacts of communication technology on the human senses. Here we see how important intellectual ideas often grow out of communication between scholars, allowing them to test and extend their thinking in a collaborative mode.