Understanding Media (Routledge Classics) - Hardcover

McLuhan, Marshall

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 041525549X ISBN 13: 9780415255493

Publisher: Routledge, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

'McLuhan sings of the furthest reaches of electronic culture, when computer technology has replaced language with instant nonverbal communication.' - Wired

From the Back Cover

'He belongs to that small group of radical dreamers and thinkers who are trying to realize and explore the altered conditions of modern existence ... When the growth of post-Einsteinian mythologies is recorded, McLuhan's work will have its distinct place. He stands at the frontier.' - George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement

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 21st century digital world, the madman looks quite sane. Understanding Media: the most important book ever written on communication. Ignore its message at your peril.

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980). Communications theorist and 'high guru' of media culture.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 041525549X
• ISBN 13: 9780415255493
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 400