Imagologies: Media Philosophy [Paperback]

Mark C. Taylor (Author), Esa Saarinen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 1994 | ISBN-10: 041510338X | ISBN-13: 978-0415103381

Imagologies: Media Philosophy is no ordinary book. Provocative, irritating and stimulating, this is a work to be engaged, questioned and pondered. As the web of telecommunications technology spreads across the globe, the site of economic development, social change, and political struggle shifts to the realm of media and communications. In this remarkable book, Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen challenge readers to rethink politics, economics, education, religion, architecture, and even thinking itself.
When the world is wired, nothing remains the same. To explore the new electronic frontier with Taylor and Saarinen is to see the world anew. A revolutionary period needs a revolutionary book. Get a head start of the 21st Century: Read Imagologies: Media Philosophy

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...[the authors] have raised profound questions about how we will talk to each other, work with each other, and live with each other in the visual electronic age that lies ahead." -- William Weld, Governor of Massachusetts

"...enacts and enunciates a new philosophy of communication..." -- Cornel West, Princeton University

"Imagologies is a loopy, active and uninhibited investigation of electronic interplay . . ." -- LA Weekly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Mark C. Taylor is widely recognized as one of America's leading philosophers and cultural critics. He is currently the Preston S. Parish Professor of Humanities at Williams College. He is the author of twelve books, including most recently Disfiguring: Art, Architecture, and Religion. Esa Saarinen is the best-known Finnish intellectual of his generation. He is Acting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and has made appearances on Finnish television and radio, in newspapers, and magazines. He is the author of nine books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (March 31, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041510338X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415103381
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,088,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars waste of time, September 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Imagologies: Media Philosophy (Paperback)

Marc C. Taylor is a superb philosopher, but this book was more than a disappointment, it was a complete waste of time. The philosophical content was zero. Macluhan told us that the media is the message; he was surely right. This book is all glitz and form and no content. I can't image how Routledge, a well known and serious publisher of philosophical writings agreed to publish this dross.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Academics Succumbing to Media Glitz, Ho-Hum...., July 29, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Imagologies: Media Philosophy (Paperback)

IMAGOLOGIES is an antibook concerned with what it considers to be a necessary shift in the academic approach to media philosophy. According to the authors this shift is cultural, intellectual and philosophical. It calls for a restructuring of media function and capability within cyberspace, within the realm of the simulacrum and within the mediatrix.

IMAGOLOGIES looks at virtually every facet of the radical changes taking place within communications, from cyborgs and electronomics to hypertext and cyberwar. Its intellectual approach is both unorthodox and unsettling, yet within its pages are valuable perceptions which sometimes illustrate the current and future direction of electronic media.

Much of this production is innovative, timely and trendy. Still, there are journal correspondences here between the authors that I found much too tedious. And, at its worst, IMAGOLOGIES turns outdated techological terms into tired e-mail banters, capsulizes philosophical content into rampant sound bites, and visually distracts with graphical text and eye-catching geometries.

Everything about this work is designed to catch the eye. But it tries too hard to dazzle. Philosophical scholars and intellectuals may feel the need to look deeper, and may eventually interpret these markers as red flags when determining the overall validity of this antibook's rhetoric, and its final destiny within the narrow halls of academia.

3.0 out of 5 stars finger print communication, December 9, 2003

By 

suzannah mirghani - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imagologies: Media Philosophy (Paperback)

The text is written in negative black and white, which makes it interesting but not necessarily innovative. I was however, impressed by the physical manifestation of communication through the pages. At first the glossy black pages in the book made me feel uncomfortable as my finger prints(unique identity) were all over them and were visible to me and others. Former readers had left their mark as well, and then I realised that it revealed its history and that everybody at some point had literally left their mark (image) on the book in some kind of two-way image communication.