The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962)

Argues that the advent of printing changed the way we think and the way society works. I was bowled over by this book as an undergraduate in the early 60s, for the new perspectives it opened up. However, I now find it lacking in substance. ( )

es interesnate,pero esta muy caragdo de información y tiende a dispersar la mente por la cantidad de terminos que se utilizan , sin embargo, es importante leer como cultura general ( )

Insight on where we have been and are going. ( )

difficult read

Over the years I have come to appreciate the often criticized McLuhan, and "The Gutenberg Galaxy" is my favorite of his books. Its theme is how Western civilization was changed by adopting first the phonetic alphabet, and later the printing press. McLuhan thought that these inventions created a visual bias in the way we see the world, altered the “ratio among our senses,” and changed the trajectory of our culture. In moving from oral language or pictographs to the elastic, abstract medium of the phonetic alphabet, Western man moved from a tribal world—a tactile world of simultaneity, inclusiveness, personal significance, social integration, and magic to a schizophrenic visual world of point of view, chronology, individualism, linear perspective, abstraction, science, nationalism, and militarism. “When the meaningless sign linked to the meaningless sound we have built the shape and meaning of Western man,” McLuhan says. (p. 50)

McLuhan taught English at the University of Wisconsin, St. Louis University, and the University of Toronto, where he was also the founder and director of the Center for Culture and Technology.

McLuhan points out that during the manuscript phase of book production reading was always done aloud and to an audience. Literature was not so much literary as rhetorical, and the rules of rhetoric governed its composition. When society was primarily oral, words were seen as sacred, and their hearing was often compared with digestion. Words were poetic, and point of view shifted erratically by our standards. The concept of authorship was unknown before printing.

Printing brought silent reading and authorship, but also led to what McLuhan called the “homogenization of space,” the segmentation of actions and functions, and a rise in technology or “applied knowledge.” Art and science split apart. Holism fractured and science became entranced with the shards. What had been a cohesive society new became a collection of individuals formed into nation-states. “Print is the technology of individualism,” McLuhan says.

McLuhan was fascinated by media and its effects, and his thinking strayed into the effects of other media besides print. In one section of the book, McLuhan demonstrates that the grammar of film— cutaways, closeups, pan shots, etc.—is not easily understood or transparent, but must be learned if the film is to be understood as the creator wishes. Tribal Africans viewing a training film about sanitation missed the film's message but saw a chicken passing in the periphery through a frame. Also, the African audience was confused and chagrined to see a person disappear off the edge of the screen; the film later had to be re-edited to portray the person’s disappearing around a corner, rendering it acceptable for this oral-tactile audience.

McLuhan made a career by saying the opposite of what library technophiles say they believe: only information matters, not the “container” in which it resides, be it book, video, text-on-screen, etc. McLuhan's central message is that the container *is* the message, irrespective of the information “within”; our predominant form of media will determine how we see the world.