Description
By (author) McLuhan, Marshall; By (author) McLuhan, Marshall
Short /annotation
Understanding Media: the most important book ever written on communication. Ignore its message at your peril.
When Marshall McLuhan first coined the phrases “global village” and “the medium is the message” in 1964, no-one could have predicted today”s information-dependent planet. No-one, that is, except for a handful of science fiction writers and Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media was written twenty years before the PC revolution and thirty years before the rise of the Internet. Yet McLuhan”s insights into our engagement with a variety of media led to a complete rethinking of our entire society. He believed that the message of electronic media foretold the end of humanity as it was known. In 1964, this looked like the paranoid babblings of a madman. In our twenty-first century digital world, the madman looks quite sane. Understanding Media: the most important book ever written on communication. Ignore its message at your peril.
Table of contents
Part 1: Introduction1. Medium Is the Message2. Media Hot and Cold3. Reversal of the Overheated Medium4. The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis5. Hybrid Energy: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 6. Media as Translators7. Challenge and Collapse: The Nemesis of CreativityPart 2: 8. The Spoken Word: Flower or Evil?9. The Written Word: An Eye for an Ear10. Roads and Paper Routes11. Number: Profile of the Crowd 12. Clothing: Our Extended Skin13. Housing: New Look and New Outlook 14. Money: The Poor Man”s Credit Card15. Clocks: The Scent of Time 16. The Print: How to Dig It17. Comics: Mad Vestibule to TV18. The Printed Word: Architect of Nationalism19. Wheel, Bicycle, and Airplane20. The Photograph: The Brothel-without-Walls21. Press: Government by News Leak22. Motorcar: The Mechanical Bride23. Ads: Keeping Upset with the Joneses24. Games: The Extensions of Man25. Telegraph: The Social Hormone26. The Typewriter: Into the Age of the Iron Whim27. The Telephone: Sounding Brass or Tinkling Symbol?28. The Phonograph: The Toy That Shrank the National Chest29. Movies: The Reel World30. Radio: the Tribal Drum31. Television: The Timid Giant 32. Weapons: War of the Icons33. Automation: Learning a Living
Review quote
”He belongs to that small group of radical dreamers and thinkers who are trying to realize and explore the altered conditions of modern existence … When the growth of post-Einsteinian mythologies is recorded, McLuhan”s work will have its distinct place. He stands at the frontier.” – George Steiner, The Times Literary Supplement
”Understanding Media is still the essential read on how the medium is, more and more, the message itself.” – Nicholas Lemann, Sunday Herald
”McLuhan sings of the furthest reaches of electronic culture, when computer technology has replaced language with instant nonverbal communication.” – Wired
Biographical note
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) Communications theorist, born in Canada.He is known as the original “high guru” of media culture and appeared in Woody Allen”s Annie Hall as himself.
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