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'McLuhan sings of the furthest reaches of electronic culture, when computer technology has replaced language with instant nonverbal communication.' - Wired
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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.
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In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Tough, imperfect, but essential reading,
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This review is from: RC Series Bundle: Understanding Media (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)
'The medium is the message' and 'global village' are phrases often quoted but little understood. Whilst preparing a talk about changes in publishing brought about by new technology, I thought I'd better look at the original. It was amazingly percipient - written twenty years before the internet, and drawing on his observations about radio and television, it anticipated how the ubiquitous, always-on nature of new media would change our ways of dealing with the content they carry. It it a learned and erudite book, reflecting McLuhan's earlier academic career in English Literature, but I find some of the analogies and references rather contrived and stretched. It's oddly organised, too, as though written for hypertext thirty years before its time. Hard work, but always thought-provoking, and as relevant now (perhaps more so) than when written.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
visionary,
This review is from: RC Series Bundle: Understanding Media (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)
This book should be essential to anyone involved in the media or pr. To think that it was written in 1964 is truly amazing. McLurhan grasps the true potential of the media and outlines the possibilities and power that control of the media gives. A true classic.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Marshall challenge to the terrible wizard Dawkins,
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This review is from: RC Series Bundle: Understanding Media (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)
I will stick my neck out here and state what I think is obvious but hasn't been noticed because of the erotic talisman cast by the terrible wizard Dawkins, and his hosts of genetic goblins, screaming forth from the citadels of orthodox science... (phew). This Marshall goblin argues, indeed shows, that 'human inventiveness' (various mediums invented via the cerebral cortex) is changing human behaviour, and not those ageless genes that have been swimming around since the dawn of biology. I won't go into examples here because we can see the way mobile phones are changing human behaviour already. Ok, I will like to use one little example that I only noticed after reading this book, as only masterpieces can change the field of vision of a reader. (Marshall McLuhan saw very far and he is more than the 'global village' cliché. I mean, Marshall McLuhan's ideas are a direct challenge to reductionist science but the poor man is only remembered for slogans!) Anyway here goes my example... If you look at old black and white photo's from the age before they had automobiles (1890); the people just stand in the middle of roads, like idiots! They are just relaxing and chatting away, right in the middle of a main road in broad daylight. I have even examined old oil paintings from the 18th century and the people were just as suicidal! We would never do that today, would we? You couldn't pay me one million pounds to stand in the middle of the road like those people in the photograph. Their brains were wired differently, you see. Marshall McLuhan is arguing that the cerebral cortex invents various technologies and those technologies then go on to re-wire the brain! Indeed, today we know that the brain can be re-wired. There was a famous study, a few years back, conducted on the brains of London taxi drivers that found that their brains were slightly 'better' wired blah blah. This Marshall McLuhan was a genius of some sort and his writings are weird in their persuasive power. We are indeed Janus (two faced) beings. Scientific reductionism is true, only a mad man would argue otherwise, however, the environment definitely plays a part, probably more so that your genome. This is sacrilege, but there you go ... This is a great book that you really should read if you are getting bored with the ingrained genetic determinism you've been spoon-fed most of your short life. Hurrah !!!
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