Marshall McLuhan (Bibliography)
From Mmswiki
Bibliography of Marshall McLuhan and Combatant
- 1951 The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man
"The Mechanical Bride" is McLuhan's first book, it critically and morally protested against the effect of "popular culture" and was in the same time a pioneering study of it. The Mechanical Bride is compiled of short essays, which can be read in any order, because each of its own begins with a newspaper or magazine article or a print media advertisement, followed by McLuhan's analysis, in respect thereof, every essay stands for its own. His analysis on the imagery and text, rely on the implications and their symbolism to the society.
- 1962 The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
"The Gutenberg Galaxy" deals with the fields of oral culture, print culture, cultural studies, and media ecology. McLuhans objective was it to reveal how communication technology and their symbols, for example alphabetic writing, the printing press and the electronic media will affect cognitive organization and how the consequences and influences of these for the social organization could look like.
- 1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
"Understanding Media" is the most widely known work of McLuhan. It deals like "The Gutenberg Galaxy" with the studies on media ecology. The popularly quoted sentence "The medium is the message." derived from McLuhan's conviction that media themselves, not the content they carry should be the focus of study. McLuhan's theory was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.
- 1967 The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects with Quentin Fiore
"The Medium is the Massage" is an book which arised by the encouragement from Quentin Fiore, who was an prominent graphic designer and communications consultant. The term "massage" was supposed by McLuhan to denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium. He also describes the way on how each of the "effects" from numerous media is "massaging" the human sesorium. McLuhan is proclaiming that each medium produces a different "massage" or "effect" on the human sensorium.
- 1968 War and Peace in the Global Village
"War and Peace in the Global Village" describes McLuhan's studies on war throughout the history and on how war may be conducted in the future. McLuhan's studies on this topic was mainly inspired by James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake".
- 1970 From Cliche to Archetype with Wilfred Watson
In "From Cliché to Archetype" McLuhan cooperated and worked with Wilfred Watson, who was an Canadian poet, on various implications of the verbal cliché and of the archetypes. McLuhan is describing the term "cliché" as a "normal" action, phrase, which becomes overused by the society that its impact on us is "anesthetizing".
- 1992 The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century with Bruce R. Powers
A quarter century ago, media guru McLuhan (d. 1980) wrote his famous Understanding Media. Now, in a posthumous volume cowritten by McLuhan's friend Powers (Communications Studies/Niagara U.), the premises of that work are updated. This collaboration stems from research undertaken by the authors at the Centre for Culture and Technology in Toronto. Their analysis of the worldwide impact of video-related technologies takes the myth of Narcissus (central to Understanding Media) a step further. McLuhan was struck by the fact that when men first went to the moon, we expected photographs of craters but, instead, the quintessential symbol of that adventure was the dramatic picture of earth - ourselves: "All of us who were watching had an enormous reflexive response. We 'outered' and 'innered' at the same time. We were on earth and the moon simultaneously." The authors refer to this kind of moment as a "resonating interval" - "the true action in the event was not on earth or on the moon, but rather in the airless void between. . ." In their analysis, this resonating interval represents an invisible borderline between visual and acoustic space. The distinction between the two "spaces" marks the major premise here, with visual space representing the old traditions of Western Civilization - left-brain-oriented, linear, quantitative reasoning - and acoustic space representing right-brain, pattern-producing, qualitative reasoning. Because of electronic communications, the authors believe, these two mind-sets are "slamming into each other at the speed of light." While most societies view themselves through the past, usually a century behind, present-day changes occur so rapidly that this "rearview mirror" doesn't work anymore. By use of what they call the "tetrad," the authors contend that they can postulate four stages in any invention or trend to determine what the final result will be - what it will "flip over" into (e.g., money flipped over to credit cards; the telephone to "ominpresence." as in teleconferencing; cable TV should flip over to home broadcasting; electronic-funds transfer should flip over to "an intense state of credit-worthiness as pure status"). Dense, heavily technological writing - but with the occasional insight that reminds us of what once brought such renown to McLuhan. (Kirkus Reviews).
- 1950 Empire and Communications, Harold Innis
"Empire and Communications" is the most important contributions of Innis's to the debate about how media influence the development of consciousness and societies. In this seminal text, he traces humanity's movement from the oral tradition of preliterate cultures to the electronic media of recent times. Along the way, he presents his own influential concepts of oral communication, time and space bias, and monopolies of knowledge.
- 1951 The Bias of Communication, Harold Innis
"The Bias of Communication" bargains about understanding of history, communication, and media theory. It is a collection of essays in which Innis explores the relationship between a society's communication media and that community's ability to maintain control over its development.Innis considers political and economic forces in the context of social change and the role of communication in the creation of both ancient and modern empires.
- 1998 The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution, Paul Levinson
In "The Soft Edge" Paul Levinson quotes that it would be improper to portray information technology as the cause of change in our world. Levinson argues that communication technology played a key role in the history. Levinson also examines the early social changes that became possible because of what the author calls "the first digital medium", the alphabet and other media which are related to communication technology.
- 2001 Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium, Paul Levinson
In "Digital McLuhan" Levinson explicates McLuhan's theories. He shows how McLuhan's concept of the global village is fully manifest in the Internet, as is his concept of the "discarnate man," the beautiful vision of "light-through" the hypnotic effect of light passing through glass, whether in stained glass windows, television, or computer screens and his prediction of an inclusive super media. Levinson explores the psychological impact of digital technologies as well as their profound effects on work and play.
- 2004 Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium and How It Has Transformed Everything!, Paul Levinson
In "Cellphone" Levinson explores the history of mobility in media, from books to cameras to transistor radios to laptops and examines the unique impact of a device that sits in a pocket or palm, and lets us converse by voice or text. The restricting and liberating edge of accessibility transforms restaurants, public transport, automobiles, romance, literacy, parent-child relationships, war, and indeed all walks of life, trivial and profound. Like an organic cell that moves, evolves, combines with other cells, and generates, the cellphone has become a complex companion of human life.
Contributor: Sascha Eichler and Hilmar Kleen for "Pedagogical Media Theory"
