4 ms·
This is great, McLuhan has a lot to teach. I tend to find his work much more insightful and broadly applicable than Kevin Kelly, et al. His ideas reproduced i
by oasisbob 16y ago
This is great, McLuhan has a lot to teach.
I tend to find his work much more insightful and broadly applicable than Kevin Kelly, et al.
His ideas reproduced in _The Medium is the Massage_ are the most popular, but my favorite is the concept of the media tetrad because it tends towards the descriptive, instead of the prescriptive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects
Taking Twitter for example, instead of saying "Twitter has foo effect on society", McLuhan's tetrad provides a framework for discussion and analysis. e.g., Perhaps you think Twitter retrieves the telegraph, maybe you don't, but McLuhan provides an easy method for discussion.
- zeteo 16y ago"The Medium is the Massage (sic)" Freudian slip? :)
- oasisbob 16y agoHeh, actually, no. Says McLuhan Biographer, W. Terrence Gordon: "by the time it appeared in 1967, McLuhan no doubt recognized that his original saying had become a cliché and welcomed the opportunity to throw it back on the compost heap of language to recycle and revitalize it. But the new title is more than McLuhan indulging his insatiable taste for puns, more than a clever fusion of self-mockery and self-rescue — the subtitle is 'An Inventory of Effects,' underscoring the lesson compressed into the original saying."
- jberryman 16y agoWow, thanks for posting that quote. This and the parent post assuming the title was a typo is really making my day. To add to the discussion, the first pages of the book are a photograph of a hand over an ear, overlaid with the words "...the massage?"
- kylemathews 16y agoNope, that's the actual title of a later book he wrote to provide a visual condensed introduction to his ideas. http://www.amazon.com/Medium-Massage-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/1584230703 http://www.amazon.com/Medium-Massage-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/158...