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forgottensecret's review against another edition
2.0
'Until writing was invented, men lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog.
The goose quill put an end to talk. It abolished mystery; it gave architecture and towns; it brought roads and armies, bureaucracy. It was the basic metaphor which the cycle of civilization began, the step from the dark into the light of the mind. The hand that filled the parchment page built a city.'
Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher most popular in the 1960s and 70s, is a fixture in media studies and is frequently quoted in other books about technology. Coined 'The media prophet of the 1960s' by the New York Times, I thought that I would like this book more than I did. The key idea, that the 'medium is the message', I completely agree with (this fundamentally means that the message (like a Youtube video) is less important than the medium it is carried in (a computer) and the corresponding structural changes the medium brings to a society). But, unlike Peter Mendelsund's 'What We See When We Read', which used a similar visual layout and was filled with lots of insights, they were scarce in this text. McLuhan sacrifices lucidity and a better exposition of his ideas in favor of a layout of the text and an almost obfuscating use of language. In other words, I think with another editor or a different style, this could have been an excellent book. But instead one feels a little shortchanged, and that his own ideas are better explained outside of the book he wrote to describe them. On researching a little further, it is his 1964 book 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man', where he first presents his idea of 'the medium is the message', and that might be a more illustrative arrangement of his thinking.
The two big ideas in this book, for me, were the following:
'The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology - is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life.'
'Environments are not passive wrappings, but are rather, active processes which are invisible. The groundrules, pervasive structure, and over-all patterns of environments elude easy perception.'
It can be said that we are flung into a decade of birth, and it remains difficult to envision any other representation of experience. I grew up with a Game Boy and Pokemon Blue, playing it in the backseat while our car nudged along lines of motorway traffic with hand-to-the-wheel tapping, horn pushing drivers. But it is only around a century past, where gentlemen with top hats and fashionable women in corsets carefully stepped into carriages pulled by a horse or a team of horses. Our 21st century technological reality, our medium, must be nearly inconceivable to those of that time. McLuhan indicates that the medium(s) shapes our entire life, even if we cannot immediately observe this. Neil Postman in 'Amusing Ourselves to Death', to emphasise this, contrasts the end of reading books through the warning of Aldous Huxley in 'Brave New World', that people becoming disinterested in books will be the cause, with George Orwell's concern in '1984' that books would be banned being the cause. That is, Huxley prophesised (correctly) that people would come to love the medium (technology) and this would lead to a disenchantment with books, rather than a ban being necessary to produce this.
In all, I felt like Postman's 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' does a much better job of placing McLuhan's ideas in context. McLuhan's ideas are really worth thinking about, but this book is not a necessary purchase to aid in that reflection.
The goose quill put an end to talk. It abolished mystery; it gave architecture and towns; it brought roads and armies, bureaucracy. It was the basic metaphor which the cycle of civilization began, the step from the dark into the light of the mind. The hand that filled the parchment page built a city.'
Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher most popular in the 1960s and 70s, is a fixture in media studies and is frequently quoted in other books about technology. Coined 'The media prophet of the 1960s' by the New York Times, I thought that I would like this book more than I did. The key idea, that the 'medium is the message', I completely agree with (this fundamentally means that the message (like a Youtube video) is less important than the medium it is carried in (a computer) and the corresponding structural changes the medium brings to a society). But, unlike Peter Mendelsund's 'What We See When We Read', which used a similar visual layout and was filled with lots of insights, they were scarce in this text. McLuhan sacrifices lucidity and a better exposition of his ideas in favor of a layout of the text and an almost obfuscating use of language. In other words, I think with another editor or a different style, this could have been an excellent book. But instead one feels a little shortchanged, and that his own ideas are better explained outside of the book he wrote to describe them. On researching a little further, it is his 1964 book 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man', where he first presents his idea of 'the medium is the message', and that might be a more illustrative arrangement of his thinking.
The two big ideas in this book, for me, were the following:
'The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology - is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life.'
'Environments are not passive wrappings, but are rather, active processes which are invisible. The groundrules, pervasive structure, and over-all patterns of environments elude easy perception.'
It can be said that we are flung into a decade of birth, and it remains difficult to envision any other representation of experience. I grew up with a Game Boy and Pokemon Blue, playing it in the backseat while our car nudged along lines of motorway traffic with hand-to-the-wheel tapping, horn pushing drivers. But it is only around a century past, where gentlemen with top hats and fashionable women in corsets carefully stepped into carriages pulled by a horse or a team of horses. Our 21st century technological reality, our medium, must be nearly inconceivable to those of that time. McLuhan indicates that the medium(s) shapes our entire life, even if we cannot immediately observe this. Neil Postman in 'Amusing Ourselves to Death', to emphasise this, contrasts the end of reading books through the warning of Aldous Huxley in 'Brave New World', that people becoming disinterested in books will be the cause, with George Orwell's concern in '1984' that books would be banned being the cause. That is, Huxley prophesised (correctly) that people would come to love the medium (technology) and this would lead to a disenchantment with books, rather than a ban being necessary to produce this.
In all, I felt like Postman's 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' does a much better job of placing McLuhan's ideas in context. McLuhan's ideas are really worth thinking about, but this book is not a necessary purchase to aid in that reflection.
gelle3's review against another edition
4.0
This book is still relevant and influential. It reads like a magazine, which makes it very entertaining to read.
katcanwrite's review against another edition
reading so I can contextualize Riley's After the Mass-Age better; really interesting book that was fun to dissect a little today.
kzizz's review against another edition
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Some really interesting insights but a lot of the meaning was lost on me due to the complexity of the language used. Loved the visual elements of the book.
culargo_de_oliveira's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Incrível como um livro dos anos 60 conseguiu trazer uma visão tão única aplicável aos dias atuais.
Adoro a forma como ele é anti-literário, otimista e como desafia conceitos de senso comum. Por vezes eu acho ele pouco realista, ou até mesmo otimista demais, mas mesmo assim é interessante de ler os aspectos que não concordo.
É o tipo de leitura que acredito que vai valer a pena reler a cada 5 anos.
Adoro a forma como ele é anti-literário, otimista e como desafia conceitos de senso comum. Por vezes eu acho ele pouco realista, ou até mesmo otimista demais, mas mesmo assim é interessante de ler os aspectos que não concordo.
É o tipo de leitura que acredito que vai valer a pena reler a cada 5 anos.
honeycake69's review against another edition
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.75
Really fun meditation on what different mediums do to the art and message they're trying to deliver. Easy and fun to read.