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Loading... Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (original 1964; edition 2013)by Marshall McLuhan (Author)
Work InformationUnderstanding Media by Marshall McLuhan (1964)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is a good, but not great, summary of analytical claims (but with too little evidence) by the media-studies pioneer. ( ) Hard to read, yet visionary and enlightening. Gosh, how do I even begin talking about this one. It took me almost 4 years to finish it; I had to take breaks from our from time to time. It's one of those books that seem to be written for a different kind of focus, and so densely packed with information and connections that you start feeling overwhelmed in no time. He has a way to just dump information. In the same sentence he links Einstein's Theory of Relativity to MAD Magazine ("relative" understanding opened the door to cartoons and MAD's cynicism); in another wheels and Krazy Kat (wheels extend men's reach; bricks extend Krazy Kat's). Still, he has a way to see and explain patterns others have ignored; it's no surprise many of the lessons from this book are still repeated to this day, and many future predictions turned out to be accurate (if painfully described). Reads like the extensive ramblings of a madman that was correct more often than not. Dr. McLuhan gave us a group of insights into the transition from getting our information primarily from the print mediums to the screen exposed information bath of today. The epigrams are on the money, and so is the overall message. How we get our information has a serious effect on the way our brains process and retain the information. Into the bargain the medium necessarily transforms the information it tries to transmit. This book is still worth reading, and paying attention to the point of view, as well as the portrait of the pre-internet age , will be helpful for the ages to come. Belongs to Publisher Series
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. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)302.23Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Interaction Communication Media (Means of communication)LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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