Innovation Reading Circle
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The Innovation Reading Circle aims to help develop theory around innovation through rich, high-level and well-informed public discussion around key and related texts and discourses... [Read on in Objectives]
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10: The Media and society
> Titles
The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, produced by Jerome Agel (Gingko Press, 2001) [First published 1967]
Marshall McLuhan is one of the most celebrated cultural thinkers of the last century. He is author or co-producer of The Mechanical Bride (1951), The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Understanding Media (1964), The Medium Is the Massage (1967), War and peace in the Global Village (1968). He directed Toronto’s Centre for Culture and Technology, focusing on media analysis, having studied at the University of Manitoba and Cambridge University. From the 60s onward he was both celebrated by the counter-culture and his wisdom was sought by corporations. He also appeared in the Woody Allen film Annie Hall. He died in 1980, but his reputation has been revived as media and communications have been transformed by digital technology and networks, and famously was anointed one of Wired magazine’s patron saints. [Read McLuhan biographer Terrence Gordon’s reflections, and profile on Wikipedia.]
In The Medium Is the Massage [Yes, the title is correctly spelled] McLuhan considers the effects of the electronic revolution on the individual, culture and global society by reflecting on the effects of previous technological advances in communication tools and media. He argues that “societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication”, that “the media work us over completely” and that they are “so pervasive... that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage”. This publication is more a pamphlet than a book, and Quentin Fiore’s communication design is intriguing and and original. The discussion may also address some of the themes of The Gutenberg Galaxy.
The Medium Is the Massage can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk.
Related titles
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, Marshall McLuhan (University of Toronto Press, 1962)
Understanding media; the extensions of man, Marshall McLuhan (Routledge, 2001)
> Took place
12 November 2007
> At
LBi International, 1 Naoroji Street, off Margery Street, London WC1X
0JD
Google Maps
> Notices
To find out who took part, see the ‘Confirmed Guests’ section of the the event page on Facebook.
We are grateful to LBi International for supporting and hosting this event.
Points for discussion
Some of the questions that we plan to discuss include:
- What were the ideas and social and technological developments that McLuhan was responding to when he wrote this book?
- Is it the case that print technology created the public and electric technology the mass?
- How does he justify his statement that societies are “shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication”? Is McLuhan a ‘technological determinist’ and is he right to be?
- Has mass communication had any effect on social relations, to the extent it has revealed disparities in quality of life which would not historically have have been perceived?
- What have modern thinkers taken from McLuhan in their investigations into the relationship of the digital and networked technologies and society?
- How valuable is the form of this book in communicating its message? Should McLuhan have published an aurally enhanced book?
Background reading, listening and viewing
Wikipedia entry on The Medium is the Massage and Wikibook entry on McLuhan and instruction technology
The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool, Gary Wolf, Wired magazine, Issue 4.01 | Jan 1996
Honoring Wired’s Patron Saint, Noah Shachtman, Wired, 05.13.02
The Connection: Revisiting Marshall McLuhan, WBUR, 8/27/2002. Discussants include Paul Levinson, Derrick de Kerckhove and Kevin Kelly [audio]
McLuhan would blow hot and cool about today’s internet Nick Carr, Guardian Technology , November 1 2007 [from Colin Donald]
Reviews
[None findable online.]
Interviews
Edited version of the Today Show Interview 1976 [somewhat eccentrically presented]:
If you have queries about the event please email Nico Macdonald