Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is a cornerstone of media theory — the man behind The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Understanding Media (1964) and the coinages “the medium is the message” and “the global village.” He spent most of his career at the University of Toronto. The Medium is the Massage (1967), made with graphic designer Quentin Fiore and produced by Jerome Agel, was his bestseller: a collage of aphorisms set against photographs, which is exactly the form in which this line appears.