The Medium is the Massage - Softcover

McLuhan, Marshall; Fiore, Quentin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1584230703 ISBN 13: 9781584230700

Publisher: Gingko Press, 2001

Synopsis

30 years after its publication Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage remains his most entertaining, provocative and piquant book.
With every technological and social advancement, McLuhan's proclamation that "the media work us over completely" becomes more evident and plain. In his words, so pervasive are they in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, or unaltered.

McLuhan suggests modern audiences enjoy MainStream media as soothing, enjoyable, and relaxing; however, the pleasure we find in the MainStream media is deceiving, because/as/since the changes between society and technology are incongruent, perpetuating an Age of Anxiety.

McLuhan's remarkable observation that "societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication" is undoubtedly more relevant today than ever before. With the rise of the internet and the explosion of the digital revolution there has never been a better time to revisit Marshall McLuhan.

About this title

Review

The Medium is the Massage is Marshall McLuhan's most condensed, and perhaps most effective, presentation of his ideas. Using a layout style that was later copied by Wired, McLuhan and coauthor/designer Quentin Fiore combine word and image to illustrate and enact the ideas that were first put forward in the dense and poorly organized Understanding Media. McLuhan's ideas about the nature of media, the increasing speed of communication, and the technological basis for our understanding of who we are come to life in this slender volume. Although originally printed in 1967, the art and style in The Medium is the Massage seem as fresh today as in the summer of love, and the ideas are even more resonant now that computer interfaces are becoming gateways to the global village.

About the Author

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher. His work is one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the U.S. and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message," the term global village and predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was an influential fixture in media discourse.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gingko Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1584230703
• ISBN 13: 9781584230700
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Fairey Shepard