Imagologies: Media Philosophy

by Mark C. Taylor, Esa Saarinen

Media Philosophy is no ordinary book. Provocative, irritating and stimulating, this is a work to be engaged, questioned and pondered. As the web of telecommunications technology spreads across the globe, the site of economic development, social change, and political struggle shifts to the realm of media and communications. In this remarkable book, Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen challenge readers to rethink politics, economics, education, religion, architecture, and even thinking itself.
When the world is wired, nothing remains the same. To explore the new electronic frontier with Taylor and Saarinen is to see the world anew. A revolutionary period needs a revolutionary book. Get a head start of the 21st Read Media Philosophy

Genres: Philosophy, Collections, Cultural

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 1994

About the author

Mark C. Taylor, Ph.D. (Religious Studies, Harvard University, 1973; B.A., Wesleyan University, 1968), is a philosopher of religion who chaired the Department of Religion at Columbia University 2007–2015. Previously, he was Cluett Professor of Humanities at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts), where he began his teaching career in 1973.

Reviews

[Kenneth Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, my name's inside the front cover. It was a good book. I'll copy my Amazon review here sometime :)

[Robert Hudder · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is interesting to go back and read books that were in your area of study especially when it is books on the impact of technology. This book was the result of the team course across continents. A course on Media Philosophy.

Some of the insights still hold while others haven't aged well. I had wanted to go through and provide some of what I found interesting but after leaving it for a few weeks, I am not sure how much of it is profound or even relevant. Maybe I just don't love this navel gazing as much as I have. What it has wakened is the tighter and more focused practice of philosophy. There are some sharp thoughts here. Some are laid out while others are thrown around like so much post modern confetti.

Some of the barbs land. "If you read books, justify it". Questions of the body on the net seem a little dated as we see the internet disappear into our hands and become more common place. The promise of the virtual has not been realized as such but instead there is a movement to enhance the everyday. Google and its maps are more relevant than some questions about the inhumanity of the net. Or is it? Reading in the time of Trump where virtual as a stand in for truths of different types and the fact that reality seems to be warped by Facebook or Twitter, maybe there is new earth to mine.

It was fun to read this book of the future in the future that I inhabit. Many of the technologies had not been invented in 1994 and seeing an introduction by John Perry Barlow who only recently passed away marks a passing of a certain type of frenzy in technological philosophy.