Camilla Hestdal 17:08, 5 Aug 2004 (EST) Camilla Hestdal
McLuhan,Marshall (1964) Understanding media: the extensian of man, London: Routledge ISBN: 0-415-10483-1
In this book McLuhan explores the idea that human technologies become extentions of the human organism and the central nervous system. He also etablishes the terms "hot" and "cool" media and tells us that "the medium is the message". "Every culture and every age has its favourite model of perseption and knowledge that it is inclined to perscribe for everybody and everything. The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns"
McLuhan,M.,B.R. Powers (1989)The Global Village, New York:Oxford University Press, Inc ISBN:0-19-505444-X
This book is an extention of McLuhan's previous book Understanding media: the extention of man. In The Global Village he intoduces some new frases like "Visual space" witch is the mind set of the western civilazation and "Acoustic space" buildt on holism. He also claims that the Western and the Eastern civilazation will be drawn towards each other and that the key to avoiding conflict is to understand them both at the same time, he called this the tetrad or simultanious understanding. The book "present a model for studying the structural impact of technology on society"
Understanding media and The Global Village gives us an insight into the ideas of Marshall McLuhan.
Roth,N.(1999) The McLuhan Effect. Afterimage Vol. 27, Issue 2 pp 6-8 ISSN:03007472
This artikle examines the legacy left by McLuhan by reviewing books written of him and his ideas. It also tells about the influences he has had on people ie; Louis Rosetto, co-founder, former editor and publicher of Wired Magazine, naming McLuhan as the magazines patron saint. "McLuhan's singular presence and sense of immediacy about his return is in itself an effect of the ground we share with him. For although many more of the devices he foresaw are now available and the concepts he introduced more readily understandable, the interface between print and instantaneous communication remains the same field in which we communicate. Books and journals use and represent new media; the Internet seems mainly to speed and expand the means of print. If there is a point outside or beyond it, a moment of genuinely integrated sense perception, this is the promise of the McLuhan effect."
Rothstein,E.(1997)McLuhan perferred form to content. So does the internet- to its sorrow. The New York Times June 9 pp D5 ISSN:03624331
This artikle also examines the legacy left by McLuhan; among other things calling him a prophet, but it also questiones the legacy; "What are we to make of all this attention to a dead prophet? Is it because of the ubiquity of McLuhan's suggestive aphorisms (the medium is the message) or pungent phrases (global village, information age)? Is it because he gave birth to what is now called media studies and predicted a crisis in print culture? Or maybe it is because of the appeal of his playful provocations (the future of the book is the blurb) and extreme proclamations (political democracy as we know it today is finished)".In awnsering the question he artikle goes on to outline how McLuhan was a man ahead of his time; "Yes, but it may also be partly because, as he predicted, sound bites like his have inherited the earth. And we are living in the world he outlined 30 years ago. The more the media proliferate the more plausible McLuhan's main thesis becomes: Media are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, esthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. McLuhan defined media in the broadest sense -- as extensions of the human body, expanding our ears or eyes or nervous systems, changing the ratios between our senses, and altering the way we think and experience the world."
Stille,A.(2000)With the internet, his idea again seem ahead of their time. The New York Times Oct. 14 pp B9 ISSN:03624331
The artikle reflects upon McLuhan as a person and his work; "McLuhan's meteoric rise rests principally on two early works, The Gutenberg Galaxy, which appeared in 1962, and Understanding Media, which came out two years later. In the first book, McLuhan examined writing as a technology and mapped the ways in which literacy and printed books had changed not just the external world but also people's behavior and modes of thought. Written as television was emerging as the principal source of information, McLuhan insisted that it had become possible to define and describe print culture because it was coming to an end and was destined to be replaced by the electronic age. Understanding Media took things further. The book, which introduced the phrase The medium is the message, described how technology -- from the wheel and the alphabet to the telegraph, airplane, typewriter and television -- changed social relations and mental attitudes." But at the same time it does not paint a rosy picture; "...McLuhan's legacy is complex and controversial, just as it was in his own lifetime. Many of his supporters readily admit that much of his scholarship has not aged well, even though they say the ideas underlying his work have acquired new relevance."
These three artikles give different views on Marshall McLuhan and his work. The views comes from people who knew him, or of him, and respected and admired him and his work in both positive and negative ways.
Surette,L.(1997) The Johns Hopkins Guide to literary theory & criticism
This entry is about McLuhan and his books The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding media, and what influenced him in writing his books. It also goes into who and what McLuhan got his inspiration from.
Zingrone,F.D.(2004)The Canadian Encyclopedia
This entry tells us about McLuhan and his achivments, what he tought about him self and what he studied. It goes on to tell us about his terms of "hot" and "cool" media. It also tells us about the resurgence of interest in his work that begun in the early 1990s.
These entries give us the text book explenation of McLuhan's work and life, and it put's it in a social context.
The Marshall McLuhan website
This is the official website for Marshall McLuhan. It gives information about him and his work, although some parts of it is still not up and running. It is edited by his son Eric McLuhan.
The McLuhan program in culture an technology
This program is part of University of Toronto in Canada. The program was created to keep McLuhan at the university after reciving offers from other institutions around the world. Today, as it was then, the focus of the program is on intellectual growth and stimulation.
Camilla Hestdal 02:40, 13 Aug 2004 (EST)
