What do you think?
Rate this book
Wybór tekstów
Given the profound influence that the writings and teachings of Marshall McLuhan have had in the Information Age, it is surprising how few people have read anything more than context-free excerpts printed in indecipherable day-glo fonts over a background guaranteed to induce vertigo. But once you actually get around to reading McLuhan's ideas about the Global Village, the history of print, and the rise of digital media, you realize that behind the hype he did indeed make many substantive and influential contributions.
Surprisingly, most of McLuhan's seminal books are still out of print (as of 1996). Luckily, this collection of articles and excerpts from his most important books is a comprehensive and accessible overview of the musings of the "Patron Saint of the Digerati". It includes substantial passages from my favorite McLuhan book The Gutenberg Galaxy (a brilliantly provocative academic treatise about the history and consequences of writing and printing), as well as many articles and interviews you wouldn't find in any of his previously published books anyway.
The main weaknesses of this volume are that it does not include excerpts from the hyper-kinetic and image-packed "The Medium is the Massage" -- his main contribution to pop culture of the late '60s -- and that the sources of each passage are noted only in an appendix. It would have been nice if sources were noted at the beginning or end of each linear text, and I hope this is addressed in future editions. Other than these minor editorial quibbles, this book is highly recommended.
582 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1995
23 people are currently reading
592 people want to read
About the author
Marshall McLuhan
121 books930 followersHerbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as the "father of media studies".
McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.
McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 25, 2010
A nice collection of his more important essays. Sometimes brilliant sometimes ridiculous. It can be difficult to get through, as all theory is, but its worth it. He was an excellent brain. Only critique is that he tended to think in a very Eurocentric manner so his theories about the 'global village' are not really that global at all.
February 8, 2011
Difficult but can be fun
not something i typically read through but there are a few passages or pieces in this compilation that are serious, difficult, challenging--the type of critical thinking one might do in college. but who wants that for weekend reading
not something i typically read through but there are a few passages or pieces in this compilation that are serious, difficult, challenging--the type of critical thinking one might do in college. but who wants that for weekend reading
May 1, 2013
Overrated at best.
January 20, 2019
I didn't know much about McLuhan before reading this book. I knew *of* him, but that was about it. This "best of" compilation was a solid introduction to his works.
It's not an easy read, but as I came to understand, that's just part of the McLuhan experience. His writing is a meandering exploration of concepts and references.
But tucked in there are the insights and quips -- "the medium is the message" -- that he's best known for. They're eerily prescient sometimes, enough to make you stop and think and wonder what's next.
It's not an easy read, but as I came to understand, that's just part of the McLuhan experience. His writing is a meandering exploration of concepts and references.
But tucked in there are the insights and quips -- "the medium is the message" -- that he's best known for. They're eerily prescient sometimes, enough to make you stop and think and wonder what's next.
Read
May 6, 2020All solid theories participate in uncovering or anti-deceiving knowledge. McLuhan has done a great job in revealing media and how it can be approached. Although some ideas like hot-cold binary and media determinism are too extreme, we can readjust their realisation under McLuhan's vision. As such, turning media (technical) into subjective resemblances, such as the body as media, this will disrupt what extension means as it implies a centric point towards technological objects.
July 8, 2022
Marshall McLuhan is the Canadian media theorist who became famous in the sixties for coining phrases like “global village” and “the medium is the message.” His work remains important for understanding the cultural changes as new technologies like the Internet transform our ways of getting information and communicating with one another.
The book includes essays, letters, interviews, aphorisms and excerpts from McLuhan’s books, and the editors have selected and organized the material for maximum clarity; sometimes the same ideas are repeated, but in different contexts, and because of this redundancy, the reader is supplied with several different approaches to concepts like “hot” and “cold” media and to media as environment.
The text of The Essential McLuhan is visually interesting, deploying various devices of the printed page such as double columns, different font sizes and reproductions of advertisements--reflecting McLuhan’s argument that print culture necessarily changes with the introduction of the electronic media.
McLuhan is a student of modernist literature, and of James Joyce in particular, and there is a lot of Joycean wordplay in his style.
Acquired May 20, 2000
City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario
The book includes essays, letters, interviews, aphorisms and excerpts from McLuhan’s books, and the editors have selected and organized the material for maximum clarity; sometimes the same ideas are repeated, but in different contexts, and because of this redundancy, the reader is supplied with several different approaches to concepts like “hot” and “cold” media and to media as environment.
The text of The Essential McLuhan is visually interesting, deploying various devices of the printed page such as double columns, different font sizes and reproductions of advertisements--reflecting McLuhan’s argument that print culture necessarily changes with the introduction of the electronic media.
McLuhan is a student of modernist literature, and of James Joyce in particular, and there is a lot of Joycean wordplay in his style.
Acquired May 20, 2000
City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario
December 18, 2015
Notes from finals - particularly on MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE:
The perspective that McLuhan presents in line with vision and objectivity gives insight to the interactivity that is involved in the process of decoding meaning from word. The process of deciphering visual codes and analyzing them has a productive, imaginative element to it. Writing, therefore, is regarded as a technology that provides that medium in which symbols are put together to produce words, and words provide meaning. This act of producing meaning, either through writing or reading, is an interactive process through which senses are extended to create environments by ways of association. Environments, after all, are made up of human associations. Sounds echo, McLuhan observes, and thoughts develop; senses extend and become part of the environment. It is the togetherness, the extension of human senses, that determines what would become of environments.
Our senses are extended, as McLuhan demonstrates, through the bringing about of something else. The written word offers something entirely different from the spoken word,
that involve the collective process of meaning.
The perspective that McLuhan presents in line with vision and objectivity gives insight to the interactivity that is involved in the process of decoding meaning from word. The process of deciphering visual codes and analyzing them has a productive, imaginative element to it. Writing, therefore, is regarded as a technology that provides that medium in which symbols are put together to produce words, and words provide meaning. This act of producing meaning, either through writing or reading, is an interactive process through which senses are extended to create environments by ways of association. Environments, after all, are made up of human associations. Sounds echo, McLuhan observes, and thoughts develop; senses extend and become part of the environment. It is the togetherness, the extension of human senses, that determines what would become of environments.
Our senses are extended, as McLuhan demonstrates, through the bringing about of something else. The written word offers something entirely different from the spoken word,
that involve the collective process of meaning.
September 28, 2024
I understand why some find him prophetic. Although he is sometimes more shamanic than insightful, I did feel that he was exploring expansive and exciting concepts. I never would have thought about the broader consequences of the phonetic alphabet, or media as both technology and extension of our senses. Really made me think.
November 8, 2011
Great collection -- includes McLuhan's infamous Playboy interview, one of his most lucid moments. And I love the collection of quotes -- perfect for a master of aphorism. "If I turn off this mike my relationship to you is changed instantly." to Mike Wallace in 1966, p. 273.
January 3, 2017
Lots of interesting ideas, but a lot of the material in this compilation is repetitive. Book would have been easier to understand (I think) if I had ever read Finnegans Wake, Ulysses, and King Lear. McLuhan refers to them constantly as examples of various theories in action.
March 4, 2009
great quotes, sometimes more than i could understand, but they guy had a head on his shoulders, and many of his thoughts are pretty prophetic right about now (in the 2000s)
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews