Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man Reprint Edition

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

78 customer reviews

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)

Series: MIT Press
Paperback: 392 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; Reprint edition (October 20, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262631598
ISBN-13: 978-0262631594
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 78 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #47,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #29 in Books > Textbooks > Communication & Journalism > Media Studies
- #58 in Books > Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Speech
- #77 in Books > Reference > Writing, Research & Publishing Guides > Writing > Journalism & Nonfiction

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Desron 449

You NEED to read this

January 5, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

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".

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GaryinBoston

This is the Famous Book Everyone Quotes but Few Have Read!

July 7, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is the famous book so often referred to by a multitude of intellectuals who have never, well, actually read it! While I found the precursor to this book, "The Gutenberg Galaxy" to be more fascinating (and scholarly), Understanding Media is a must read for those seeking insight into the evolution of human concsiousness and perception. Communications majors need not apply, since the book has little to do with "media" as it is defined today.

Marx thought that how production was organized (and changed over time) drove a society's social and political structures (and ultimately its citizens' psyches); McCluhan argues (in excruciating and exacting detail) that the FORM of the "extensions of man", AKA the man made world-- the wheel, clothes, the phonetic alphabet and linear printing, radio, TV, etc, AKA technology, have had profound psycho-social impacts throughout human history, driven by invention and innovation. E.g., no Gutenberg, no Renaissance and European nationalism.

Just a taste, much much more is in the book!

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

August 15, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

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.

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Robert Dubose

Cool book (in the McLuhanian sense)

March 22, 2010

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

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.

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Joshua Wettergreen

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

June 14, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

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.

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Worldreels

A WORLD WITHOUT WALLS

November 30, 2006

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

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.

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Telit Likitiz

Love this book - read it first many years ago

November 6, 2017

Format: Mass Market PaperbackVerified Purchase

Love this book - read it first many years ago. What a great mind he had, and this book is still as relevant today as every.

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April 8, 2018

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I love to read. I love to read about marketing. This book, I do not love...yet. It is not an easy read by any stretch. I feel like I have to work at it a bit. This has been called the bible for marketing, so I will pick it up again and start over.

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A theorical book, a little hard to follow for ...

A theorical book, a little hard to follow for a non native english reader but the content is deep and powerful.

Published 3 months ago

Allen SmallingTop Contributor: Classical Music

It isn't always easy but it is often amazing

A challenging, zesty, occasionally outrageous book that was first published in 1964 and sent media studies -- and their applications to such fields as advertising -- straight into...Read more

Published 8 months ago

This is a great edition of an important work in media studies.

Published 1 year ago

Amazon Customer

The medium really is the message.

Today's social upheaval was predicted by Master McLuhan back in 1964. He warns of the consequences of the Internet before it was born.Read more

Great price, helped a struggling college student

Published 1 year ago

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Something everyone should read, especially as society becomes more dependent on technology and the media.

Published 1 year ago

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