Understanding Me: Lectures and InterviewsUnbuttoned McLuhan! An intimate exploration of Marshall McLuhan’s ideas in his own words In the last twenty years of his life, Marshall McLuhan published – often in collaboration with others – a series of books that established his reputation as the pre-eminent seer of the modern age. It was McLuhan who made the distinction between “hot” and “cool” media. It was he who observed that “the medium is the message” and who tossed off dozens of other equally memorable phrases from “the global village” and “pattern recognition” to “feedback” and “iconic” imagery. McLuhan was far more than a pithy-phrase maker, however. He foresaw – at a time when the personal computer was a teckie fantasy – that the world would be brought together by the internet. He foresaw the transformations that would be wrought by digital technology. He understood, before any of his contemporaries, the consequences of the revolution that television and the computer were bringing about. In many ways, we’re still catching up to him. In Understanding Me, Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines have brought together eighteen previously unpublished lectures and interviews by or involving Marshall McLuhan. They have in common the informality and accessibility of the spoken word. In every case, the text is the transcript taken down from the film, audio, or video tape of the actual encounters – this is not what McLuhan wrote but what he said. The result is a revelation: the seer who often is thought of as aloof and obscure is shown to be funny, spontaneous, and easily understood. |
Contents
American Perspectives 1960 | 12 |
Cybernetics and Human Culture 1964 | 44 |
The Future of Man in the Electric Age 1965 | 56 |
The Medium Is the Massage 1966 | 76 |
Predicting Communication via the Internet 1966 | 98 |
First Lecture 1967 | 139 |
OpenMind Surgery 1967 | 147 |
The Future of the Book 1972 | 173 |
The End of the Work Ethic 1972 | 187 |
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Common terms and phrases
acoustic space acoustic world American artifacts artist audience become Brokaw called Canada civilization corporate created culture David Staines effects electric age electric information electric speed electronic Eliot environment everything fact feel Finnegans Wake flip frontier global going grievance Gutenberg Hans Hass happening hardware Harold Innis human idea identity inside instant replay involved James Joyce jokes Kermode kind literacy literate live look Marshall McLuhan McManus means medium ment monopolies of knowledge motor car moving nature never nineteenth century objective journalism pattern phonetic alphabet planet play poetry present problem radio rear-view mirror role role-playing sense simultaneous situation Snyder sort speed of light Sputnik story strange T. S. Eliot teaching machine television There's thing tion Tom Wolfe tribal visual space Western Wolfe Women's Lib writing Xerox