Counterblast

McLuhan, Marshall

ISBN 10: 0853911371 / ISBN 13: 9780853911371

Published by Rapp & Whiting Ltd, 1970

About this Item

Dustwrappr scuffed and worn at edges.

Seller Inventory # c316132

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Counterblast
• Publisher: Rapp & Whiting Ltd
• Publication Date: 1970
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0853911371
• ISBN 13: 9780853911371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature
  • Film/Music/Theatre/Media

About this title

Synopsis

In 1969 Marshall McLuhan observed that "today we live invested with an electric information environment that is quite as imperceptible to us as water is to a fish." He was convinced that the new electronic media shape not only the information they convey but also our very consciousness and that in order to actually perceive this a counter environment is needed. To demonstrate his point McLuhan wrote Counterblast. More a manifesto than a book, Counterblast is a typographically explosive compilation of short essays and probes (complex ideas compressed into a few thought-provoking words), all of which focus on the effects of media on the human condition. It could be seen as a compilation of bold headlines and it is hauntingly prescient, as this superbly reproduced facsimile of the original edition will affirm. In true McLuhan style that title 'Counterblast' is a play on the word 'Blast', the name given to a magazine designed by Wyndham Lewis in 1914 and the first publication ever to be set in heavy headline type, albeit in the face of enormous resistance from the London printing establishment who considered it anti-literary.