 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | The Medium is the Massage is Marshall McLuhan's most condensed, and perhaps most effective, presentation of his ideas. Using a layout style that was later copied by Wired, McLuhan and coauthor/designer Quentin Fiore combine word and image to illustrate and enact the ideas that were first put forward in the dense and poorly organized Understanding Media. McLuhan's ideas about the nature of media, the increasing speed of communication, and the technological basis for our understanding of who we are come to life in this slender volume. Although originally printed in 1967, the art and style in The Medium is the Massage seem as fresh today as in the summer of love, and the ideas are even more resonant now that computer interfaces are becoming gateways to the global village. |
Average Customer Rating:   EYEOPENING McLuhan was a prophet of his time for communications. His message is timeless and provides expert ideas seamlessly through this book! Good Quality A great book for those studying the differences in the types of media. Has a nice, thick cover too, not thin paper. So revolutionary we now view it as conventional Perhaps the best test of new ideas is how quickly they morph to become conventional wisdom.
Viewed from this perspective this book is one of a few excellent examples.
It evidenced the first use of the term global village. But more than that it accurately portrayed what we have since come to view as the means of communication in that village...the modern technological media.
By its necessarily condensed communication structure it's created stealth ideas that quickly cease the public consciousness (only all too often, to be just as quickly overthrown).
Though the story through pictures idea is now admittedly just as dated as the phrase "right on" which came from the same time period the book nevertheless remains interesting reading for students of communications, the media and popular culture. Amidst the chaos, some nuggets of truth do shine through. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects is a crazy little book (159 pages, mostly with images) that has been spouting some crazy ideas since its original publication in 1967. The book was written by Marshall McLuhan and desgined by Quentin Fiore. It is also the only book I have ever found with its own producer, one Jerome Angel.
This book is also what I imagine a book would look like were it on drugs.
In other words, I found this book to be complete chaos. In images, photos, text, and aphorisms, McLuhan tries to analyze, and perhaps even define, what life will be like as more and more technologies enter society's everyday lives. Will the global village shrink? Will distances matter at all? Will everything we thought we knew about technology be rendered moot? Maybe. McLuhan deals with all of those topics and more.
The problem with the book is that these topics are dealt with in a very scattered manner. While some points were interesting, most were confusing. And while the design of the book is sort of revolutionary, even after forty some odd years, it is also chaotic. I also can't help but wonder if those forty years between today and the original publication have made some of the points McLuhan et al hoped to make dated in the interim.
Qualms aside, the book does make one good point that even I was able to understand amidst the chaos and confusion I felt throughout The Medium is the Massage:
there is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening
No matter what truth (or lack thereof) can now be found in this book, the above statement holds true. It is also a crucial element to any media discussion which is why, even though this book is crazy in so many different ways, people are still looking to it for answers about how technology is impacting all of our lives. So, while I didn't really "get" everything this book had to say I am able to appreciate why others find it so crucial to discussions of technology thanks to that quote. Amidst the chaos, some nuggets of truth do shine through.
Revolutionary ... even now, 40 years later
One of the great piece of feedback I got from my boss (and independently from our COO) was that while I am close enough to technology and design I am not really in the advertising and marketing business. Two weeks ago at the Forrester Consumer Forum I cornered a traveling bard of the advertising industry: Shane. Just Shane. I managed to pick over his almost photographic memory for books that would help ground me in the business. The first book I read on my quest to get closer to the advertising business was "The medium is the massage" by Marshall McLuhan. O ... M ... G This book was written in 1967 and sounds like it was written this year. McLuhan's vision for the future and linkage to the change from a mechanistic society to an information society is still directly relevant. As we move from an information society into a conceptual society, his message still resonates. Why have I not heard of this book before? Why did I not read this in university? Why has this been hidden from me, despite my design reading and exploration of the fields of visualization, visual thinking, creativity, and problem solving? Oh yeah, because none of those things are in advertising. Some of my favorite quotes (several incredibly apropos of this particular time and space):
Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.
The core message from the book can be boiled down into the following:
The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.
And of course:
The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium / that is, of any extension of ourselves / result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.
Get this book. Read this book. Re-read this book imagining yourself (or like me your parents) in 1967. Think about it. (re-posted from http://dckiwi.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/the-medium-is-the-message/)
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