Understanding Media: The Extensions of ManWhen first published, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century. This edition of McLuhan's best-known book both enhances its accessibility to a general audience and provides the full critical apparatus necessary for scholars. This critical edition makes available for the first time the core of the research project that spawned the book. In Terrence Gordon's own words, "McLuhan is in full flight already in the introduction, challenging us to plunge with him into what he calls 'the creative process of knowing.'" Much to the chagrin of his contemporary critics McLuhan's preference was for a prose style that explored rather than explained. Probes, or aphorisms, were an indispensable tool with which he sought to prompt and prod the reader into an "understanding of how media operate" and to provoke reflection. In the 1960s, McLuhan's theories aroused both wrath and admiration. It is intriguing to speculate what he might have to say 40 years later on subjects to which he devoted whole chapters such as Television, The Telephone, Weapons, Housing and Money. Today few would dispute that mass media has indeed decentralized modern living and turned the world into a global village. This critical edition features an appendix that makes available for the first time the core of the research project that spawned the book and individual chapter notes are supported by a glossary of terms, indices of subjects, names, and works cited. There is also a complete bibliography of McLuhan's published works. |
Contents
Introduction to the Second Edition | 9 |
The Medium Is the Message | 17 |
Media Hot and Cold | 37 |
Copyright | |
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American artist audience automation awareness become central nervous system century chapter clock comic communication cool created culture depth effect electric age electric technology electronic Eric McLuhan experience explosion extension fact film Finnegans Wake fragmented functions Gutenberg homogenized hot medium human I. A. Richards iconic idea implosion industrial instant intensity interplay involvement Jack Paar James Joyce jazz Jonathan Miller Joyce kind language learning Lewis Mumford lineal literacy literate lives machine Marshall McLuhan mass media means mechanical mosaic movable types movie newspaper nonliterate oral organization participation patterns perception phonetic alphabet phonograph photograph physical political printed word radio reader Renascence role sense society space specialist speed speedup stress structure tactile telegraph telephone television tion translate tribal Trobriander TV image typewriter typography Understanding Media uniform visual Western Western world wheel writing