Customer Reviews

Imagologies: Media Philosophy

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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.

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 And, at its worst, IMAGOLOGIES turns outdated techological terms into tired e-mail banters, capsulizes philosophical content into rampant sound bites, and visually distracts with graphical text and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.

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.

Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen take a serious attemp to find new and refressing wiev on totally old meadia (book). They use the book very diffferently than most other writers are using. This is also the difficulty with the reader: you have to escape from the old fassioned way to treat the book, it's purpose and meaning and you must try to shift your mind on a new level. I suggest every reader puts old prejudices away and starts a refressing journey with these two gentlemen. You may be surprised!