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 In Understanding Me, Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines have brought together eighteen previously unpublished lectures and interviews by or involving Marshall McLuhan.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 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 |
Art as Survival in the Electric Age 1973 | 206 |
Living at the Speed of Light 1974 | 225 |
What TV Does Best 1976 | 244 |
Violence as a Quest for Identity 1977 | 264 |
Man and Media 1979 | 277 |
Afterword by David Staines | 299 |
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Common terms and phrases
acoustic American artist audience awareness become Brokaw called Canada civilization created culture David Staines discovery effects electric age electronic age environment Eric Havelock Euclidean space everything example fact feel Finnegans Wake flip frontier global going grievance Gutenberg happening Harold Innis human idea identity industrial involved James Joyce jazz jokes Kermode kind literacy literate live look Marfleet Marshall McLuhan mass media McManus means medium ment motor car movie moving nature neolithic never nineteenth century oral tradition Oriental pattern perception phonetic alphabet planet play poets possible present problem radio rear-view mirror role Seldes sense simultaneous situation Snyder society sort speed speed of light story strange T. S. Eliot teaching machine television There's thing tion Tom Wolfe tribal Western Western world Wolfe writing