Understanding me : lectures and interviews / Marshall McLuhan ; edited by Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines ; with a foreword by Tom Wolfe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McLuhan, Marshall, 1911-1980.

Contributor:

McLuhan, Stephanie.

Staines, David, 1946-

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

McLuhan, Marshall, 1911-1980.

Mass media.

McLuhan, Marshall, 1911-1980--Interviews.

McLuhan, Marshall.

Genre:

Interviews.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xxvi, 317 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Manufacture:

Toronto : M&S.

Place of Publication:

[Cambridge, Mass.] : [MIT Press], [2003]

Summary:

In the last twenty years of his life, Marshall McLuhan published a series of books that established his reputation as a world-renowned communications theorist and the pre-eminent seer of the modern age. It was McLuhan who made the distinction between "hot" and "cool" media. And it was he who coined the phrases "the medium is the message" and "the global village" and popularized other memorable terms including "feedback" and "iconic." McLuhan was far more than a pithy phrasemaker, however. He foresaw the development of the personal computer at a time when computers were huge, unwieldy machines available only to institutions. He anticipated the wide-ranging effects of the Internet. And he understood, better than any of his contemporaries, the transformations that would be wrought by digital technology -- in particular, the globalization of communications and the instantaneous-simultaneous nature of the new, electric world. In many ways, we're still catching up to him. In Understanding Me, Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines have brought together nineteen previously unpublished lectures and interviews either by or with Marshall McLuhan. They have in common the informality and accessibility of the spoken word. In every case, the text has been transcribed from the original audio, film, or videotape of McLuhan's actual appearances. This is not what McLuhan wrote but what he said -- the spoken words of a surprisingly accessible public man. He comes across as outrageous, funny, perplexing, stimulating, and provocative. McLuhan will never seem quite the same again.

Contents:

Electronic Revolution: Revolutionary Effects of New Media (1959) 1

Popular/Mass Culture: American Perspectives (1960) 12

Technology, the Media, and Culture 13

The Communications Revolution 34

Cybernetics and Human Culture (1964) 44

The Future of Man in the Electric Age (1965) 56

The Medium Is the Massage (1966) 76

Predicting Communication via the Internet (1966) 98

The Marfleet Lectures (1967) 103

Canada, the Borderline Case 105

Towards an Inclusive Consciousness 124

Fordham University: First Lecture (1967) 139

Open-Mind Surgery (1967) 147

TV News as a New Mythic Form (1970) 158

The Future of the Book (1972) 173

The End of the Work Ethic (1972) 187

Art as Survival in the Electric Age (1973) 206

Living at the Speed of Light (1974) 225

What TV Does Best (1976) 244

TV as a Debating Medium (1976) 256

Violence as a Quest for Identity (1977) 264

Man and Media (1979) 277.

Notes:

Publication information from jacket and spine.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

026213442X

OCLC:

54539869