Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews

by Marshall McLuhan, David Staines (Editor), Stephanie Mcluhan (Editor)

Previously unpublished lectures and interviews by the modern age's preeminent media seer—informal, accessible, provocative. In the last twenty years of his life, Marshall McLuhan published a series of books that established his reputation as a world-renowned communications theorist and the pre-eminent seer of the modern age. It was McLuhan who made the distinction between "hot" and "cool" media. And it was he who coined the phrases "the medium is the message" and "the global village" and popularized other memorable terms including "feedback" and "iconic." McLuhan was far more than a pithy phrasemaker, however. He foresaw the development of personal computers at a time when computers were huge, unwieldy machines available only to institutions. He anticipated the wide-ranging effects of the Internet. And he understood, better than any of his contemporaries, the transformations that would be wrought by digital technology—in particular, the globalization of communications and the instantaneous-simultaneous nature of the new, electric world. In many ways, we're still catching up to him—forty years after the publication of Understanding Media . In Understanding Me , Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines have brought together nineteen previously unpublished lectures and interviews either by or with Marshall McLuhan. They have in common the informality and accessibility of the spoken word. In every case, the text has been transcribed from the original audio, film, or videotape of McLuhan's actual appearances. This is not what McLuhan wrote but what he said—the spoken words of a surprisingly accessible public man. He comes across as outrageous, funny, perplexing, stimulating, and provocative. McLuhan will never seem quite the same again. The foreword by Tom Wolfe provides a twenty-first century perspective on McLuhan's life and work, and co-editor David Staines's insightful afterword offers a personal account of McLuhan as teacher and friend. Lectures and Interviews
Electronic Revolutionary Effects of New Media (1959) •Popular/Mass American Perspectives (1960) • Technology, the Media, and Culture • The Communications Revolution • Cybernetics and Human Culture (1964) • The Future of Man in the Electric Age (1965) • The Medium Is the Massage (1966) • Predicting Communication via the Internet (1966) • The Marfleet Lectures (1967) • Canada, the Borderline Case • Towards an Inclusive Consciousness • Fordham First Lecture (1967) • Open-Mind Surgery (1967) • TV News as a New Mythic Form (1970) • The Future of the Book (1972) • The End of the Work Ethic (1972) • Art as Survival in the Electric Age (1973) • Living at the Speed of Light (1974) • What TV Does Best (1976) • TV as a Debating Medium (1976) • Violence as a Quest for Identity (1977) • Man and Media (1979)

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Cultural

344 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Herbert 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.

Reviews

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

cold is hot, hot is cold. the medium is the message, the medium is the massage, jimmy carter has charisma because he looks like every other american boy. no wonder a man needs a guide on how to understand mcluhan and his off the wall notions. i think this here book helped. it had mcluhan telling stories at universities and at television studios and he liked to joke and say how villages are not always the nicest of places.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

I missed the "-dia"?

I cannot make up my mind about McLuhan. Sage or Charlatan? I find all this "speed of light" and "accoustic consciousness" a bit meaningless. We are never shown the way in which he arrived at his conclusions. There is no reasoning, just these bald statements. It all seems a bit precious now in the age of social media and the all pervasive internet. I don't believe he truly saw what was coming...

Some of his ideas such as the Cadillac with the stagecoach in the rear-view mirror seem kind of obvious when you think about them, and maybe that is the issue, his insights are profound, it is they way he tosses them around as one liners that makes it hard to take them seriously...

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with an essay collection is that some will be inevitably good, while others won't suit my interests. This book is no exception. The talks or essays immortalized within are exceedingly readable, but reading them through the lens of now reminds me of the racism, cultural imperialism, problems and more that pervade the text. Still, it is a book worth reading which encapsulates much of the thought and ideas of Marshall McLuhan. I doubt I will ever reread this text, but I did enjoy aspects of reading it for a first time, as frustrated and skeptical as I occasionally was.

[Patrick Hanlon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sampler is probably not the ideal introduction to McLuhan’s work and insights. As a compilation of lectures and interviews, the repetition of common themes and tropes is not as engaging as a full dive into a single volume of his work, expanded upon and given the advantages of a deep and fully structured argument rather than these briefer pieces which were often pared down for the sake f engaging the audiences he was presenting to.

[Theryn Fleming · Rating 4 out of 5]

Understanding Me is a chronological compilation of Marshall McLuhan lectures and interviews, with some context for each provided by the editors. As it's basically transcripts of oral remarks, it's very readable, and probably a good place to start McLuhan-wise. Funnily enough, one of the interviewers, Tom Snyder, actually says, "it was easier listening to you than it is reading you" (p. 255).

There is a lot of repetition, but rather than that being annoying, it serves to emphasize McLuhan's main themes and ideas. To update his remarks for the 21st century (he died in 1980), just substitute "internet" for "TV."

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some outstanding and rare lectures and conference presentations. For those interested in McLuhan, this is intellectual punctuation for his academic career.