Understanding media : the extensions of man
Series: Routledge classicsPublication details: London : Routledge, 2005Description: vi, 392 pages ; 20 cmISBN:- 0415253977
- 9780415253970
- 041525549X
- 9780415255493
- P90
Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Whitecliffe Library General Shelves | General | P 90 MCL (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Use in Library Only - Not for Loan | 0016876 |
Includes bibliographical references.
The medium is the message -- Media hot and cold -- Reversal of the overheated medium -- The gadget lover : narcissus as narcosis -- Hybrid energy : Les liaisons dangereuses -- Media as translators -- Challenge and collapse : the nemesis of creativity -- The spoken word : flower of evil? -- The written word : an eye for an ear -- Roads and paper routes -- Number : profile of the crowd -- Clothing : our extended skin -- Housing : new look and new outlook -- Money : the poor man's credit card -- Clocks : the scent of time -- The print : how to dig it -- Comics : Mad vestibule to TV -- The printed word : architect of nationalism -- Wheel, bicycle, and airplane -- The photograph : the brothel-without-walls -- Press : government by news leak -- Motorcar : the mechanical bride -- Ads : keeping upset with Joneses -- Games : the extensions of man -- Telegraph : the social hormone -- The typewriter : into the age of the iron whim -- The telephone : sounding brass or tinkling symbol? -- The phonograph : the toy that shrank the national chest -- Movies : the reel world -- Radio : the tribal drum -- Television : the timid giant -- Weapons : war of the icons -- Automation : learning a living.
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.