Understanding Media

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Marshall McLuhan

The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994, 1964, English

Nonfiction, General

ISBN: 9780262631594

From the Publisher. This reissue of Understanding Media marks the thirtieth anniversary (1964-1994) of Marshall McLuhan's classic expose on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media. Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

On 2 book lists

Craig Dykers

On Craig Dykers’s Book List

An essential book for understanding the power of the power of media in our creation of things.

Ian Ritchie

On Ian Ritchie’s Book List

The seminal book that asked what communications are and how they affect us. I read the book again (it is at times impenetrable, like reading Joyce for the first time) before teaching “communications” at the Polytechnic of Central London’s Planning School.

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