Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man Reprint Edition

by Marshall McLuhan (Author), Lewis H. Lapham (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0262631594

ISBN-10: 0262631598

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Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.

This reissue of Understanding Media marks the thirtieth anniversary (1964-1994) of Marshall McLuhan's classic expose on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media. Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.

There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

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Editorial Reviews

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...the most brilliant marketing mind of all belonged to Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media is a timeless analysis of how language, speech and technology shape human behavior in the era of mass communication. The book is a cautionary tale for marketers today who hear the Web's siren call and ignore the power of the spoken word.—Wall Street Journal—

Product details

Publisher : The MIT Press; Reprint edition (October 20, 1994)
Language : English
Paperback : 389 pages
ISBN-10 : 0262631598
ISBN-13 : 978-0262631594
Reading age : 18 years and up
Item Weight : 1.2 pounds
Dimensions : 8.9 x 5.94 x 0.97 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #58,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #56 in Media Studies (Books)
- #89 in Journalism Writing Reference (Books)
- #100 in Speech (Books)

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Desron 449

You NEED to read this

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2018

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If you read this you will understand "what" is going on with cable, internet, computer stream news. It is "pooh poohed" NOW by the very people who raved about it when it was published because it EXPOSED before it's time how "media" influences people and the "media" does not want you to know. This was, and IS, a "seminal" book about how the different types of media INFLUENCE you by it's PRESENCE, not just the "content".

22 people found this helpful

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jolomo

Beautiful physical artifact

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2020

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It goes without saying the work itself remains as monumental as before but this sparkling hardcover edition adds the facet of beauty. I grew up with an old Mentor paperback with microscopic print and about zero whitespace. This edition sets the chapters nicely apart from each other, giving the reader and the text some room to breath. I highly recommend this Gingko critical edition.

2 people found this helpful

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Mike McClory

Understanding the World …

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2015

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If you haven't read Understanding Media, don't be surprised if you find what's going on in the world confusing. McLuhan explained it all — or most of it — back in the 1950s. The best way to approach Understanding Media is to start with The Mechanical Bride, and then move on to The Gutenberg Galaxy before diving into Understanding Media. Otherwise, you may find much of what McLuhan has to offer baffling — kind of like walking into a play in the middle of the third act.

21 people found this helpful

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Worldreels

A WORLD WITHOUT WALLS

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2006

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With all the ink spilt over UNDERSTANDING MEDIA it is easy to forget that it is just a book full of printed words, one of the media McLuhan discussed. Wait one second, if the message, in itself, doesn't really matter, if the media is the message, what differentiated this book from any other? It was his literary style, his dichotomies, his analogies and his metaphors.

The fact is that inventing dichotomies is like asserting theories without any evidence. How can you prove the validity of a dichotomy? Couldn't these dichotomies become distortions, even an abuse of language? And although Marshall doesn't proclaim any morality involved by using his dichotomies, it is implicitly there.

McLuhan's linguistic technique was to use dichotomies such as media and message, such as hot and cold media, such as electric and pre-electric culture. He placed his dichotomies like stones across a river. Once the readers step off the shore they must keep stepping on these stones, these dichotomies, or go splash. There is no way to turn around.

The problem with McLuhan's message, with his vocabulary, with particularly his terms "extensions" and "media" is that he implied a rather ridiculous metaphor with them. His term, "extensions" depicted man being jerked by the unseen puppeteer, outside strings attached to the numb puppet to make him dance.

As he discussed at length in Chapter 21, The Press, McLuhan was very aware that he was spinning the words. He had a corporate image of his own to enhance, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA, itself. He was his own press agent. Listen to him on P. 213,: "Today's press agent regard the newspaper as a ventriloquist does his dummy." McLuhan was both writing a book and advertising that book at the same time. He wasn't hung up on being accurate -- he knew the spinning power of fiction. On P. 216 he speaks of "dressing up language." It becomes obvious that he used all the techniques he discussed in advertising while writing this book.

His idea that man's brain was a blank tableau, a tabula rasa, set the reader up for his dichotomies that all media were extensions of man's brain or central nervous system, CNS. But is man's CNS a tabula rasa? One thinks not. The various media he listed are all part and parcel of man's CNS. It would have been more accurate to term McLuhan's so called "extensions" as dimensions. These "extensions" never actually existed outside McLuhan's thesis and vocabulary.

10 people found this helpful

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Joshua Wettergreen

But there is so much original thought in it that it is great food for thought

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2015

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Very difficult to read. Only understood about a third of it the first time through. But there is so much original thought in it that it is great food for thought. The author has understanding of the relationship between "media" and man that is found nowhere else. McLuhan is essential to understand what the electric technology means for us.

3 people found this helpful

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Robert Dubose

Cool book (in the McLuhanian sense)

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2010

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This is a beautiful edition. And the critical commentary by Terrence Gordon provides a helpful structure for getting your mind around McLuhan's ideas.

Although this may be McLuhan's great work, it is not best place to start. It is long and often incoherent. On page 39, McLuhan introduces a notoriously difficult metaphor that he uses through the book. It concerns hot and cool media. "Hot media are ... low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience." So, he explains, hieroglyphics and photographs are hot, but the phonetic alphabet and cartoons are cool. Radio and movies are hot, but the TV and the telephone are cool.

Does that make any sense? If not, the better place to start is his earlier work, The Gutenberg Galaxy. It is shorter, and the logic is much easier to follow. It lays out the basis of McLuhan's thinking about how changes in media reshape culture. If you are a systematic thinker like me, it is a far better book to get the basics of McLuhan's analytical method and ideas.

Even if you have the basics, UM is a dense, inspiring, and unsettling work. In each of the 33 chapters, McLuhan makes connections that change the way I think about culture. But just as often, he makes some nonsensical analogy or leap of logic and then fails to explain it.

In the end, it helps to stop trying to understand UM and let it inspire you to think.

In other words, it is very cool.

41 people found this helpful

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OutStanding. Magnificent work by McLuhan. First book I ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2017

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OutStanding. Magnificent work by McLuhan. First book I read by him and from now on that's all I'm ever gonna rhyme about. He lead me down the rabbit hole and I don't plan on ever climbing out.

3 people found this helpful

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Nry S.

A freaking book

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2019

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It's a freaking book, what do you want for me. If you buy this book you will have cover to cover fun to Your Wildest Dream until you get to the index and then a disappointing blank page.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

acompton

A challenging read. Clearly ahead of its time when written but not very useful today

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 11, 2021

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This was really hard going. I don't often fail to read a book but it's so dense and so impractical I just couldn't stick with it. It's a shame because the author is clearly very smart, quoting from a wide range of fascinating sources, while some of the insights are very interesting. What let's it down though is that he writes in a way where he defines his own meanings of words, almost creating his own media language to articulate his arguments. In the end these are also just his opinions, and the complicated writing style isn't necessary and came across as a bit self-indulgent. Reminded me of when you talk to a crazy person who clearly has a really high IQ, sometimes interesting nuggets appear but not worth wading through chapters of introspective rambling to find them.

Verity

Perfect

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 22, 2021

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Perfect

Lone Ant

understanding the marshall

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 18, 2016

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A peerless analysis of the social-cultural bypass suffered by humanity since the 1960's, beautifully packaged by Gingko Press in an eminently readable edition. Highly recommended.

Stephen Ingless

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 5, 2014

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Excellent seller, highly recommended! A++++

Longlance

More important than ever

Reviewed in Canada on April 26, 2016

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A seminal and throughout sublime work that increasingly resonates the further we slide into the shallows of social media, run by the one-percent economy goons who remain largely oblivious to the environments they create but who get away with it by appearing to care or by distracting us with next-gen technologies and ideas, such as self-landing rockets and ueber-AI -- technologies themselves that will distort the reality field even further, only widen the technology have/have not gap, and thereby further disrupt humanity and human values. McLuhan would have loved the "selfie" in particular, as the fragmentation/amputation of the self from the self, and a darkly pathetic answer to the question posed in The Mechanical Bride, first published in 1951: Do you feel a need to be distinctive and mass produced?

In other words, and in acknowldgement of Nicholas Carr's own work, how shallow can you get?

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