1.) Is Marshall McLuhan worth reading? 2.) If so, where does one start?
6 comments:
Jonathan
said...
Definitely worth it. His utopianism is a turn-off for some - Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Friedrich Kittler's academic books (Gramophone, Film, Typewriter is especially worth a look - I prefer to anything McLuhan wrote) recast his ideas more pessimistically - but Understanding Media is the place to start. Influential book for his hot/cool media distinction and his argument that media technologies are extensions of the central nervous system. For what it's worth, a number of David Cronenberg's films - Videodrome and eXistenZ in particular - bear the stamp of McLuhan's thought.
Maybe consider starting with Walter Ong, a student of McLuhan's. His "Orality and Literacy" is partly an effort to lay some groundwork for McLuhan after the fact.
McCluhan is definitely worth reading, though it has been decades since I've done so. His analysies and descriptions still pop into my head regularly. Best place to start? Annie Hall.
I'll second Jonathan above -- Understanding Media is a great starting point for exploring McLuhan's ideas (and, though tastes may vary, a pretty good ending point as well).
I went through a rabid McLuhan phase as a young man, but going back to his work now I have to say that Understanding Media was the only book of his that I read that really stands up well today. But it does, indeed, stand up pretty well, as long as you can handle his impressionistic style.
Ethan's working through his music collection in alphabetical order
The next five artists he'll be listening to:
The Clash The Clientele Jimmy Cliff Patsy Cline Clinic
(Project began May 29, 2010. Finished through the letter B on April 1, 2011 with 460 items catalogued on Rate Your Music.)
Ethan's reading
Samuel R. Delany Triton aka Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Thoughts that aren't getting whole posts
- I just caught my cat licking one of my dirty shirts. When he saw I was watching, he pretended he'd been cleaning himself all along. -ethan 9/23/11
- I didn't know The Pixies covered "I've Been Waiting for You"! So on Heathen, David Bowie covered The Pixies AND a song they covered? Weird. -ethan 9/21/11
- Dangerous Visions is so goddamn macho. And like half the writers are military or "intelligence" or government or advertising dudes. It largely bites. -ethan 9/10/11
- I wish people would figure out that "HD" is not even close to "like you're actually there"--it's completely different from how we really see things. If they figured that out, maybe it would occasionally be used interestingly. -ethan 9/9/11
- Robinson Crusoe on Mars has its major problems, but it looks like a series of living Nicholas Roerich paintings. -ethan 9/3/11
- I just plain don't like Brian Aldiss. -ethan 8/31/11
- Here, at least, it was a good hurricane. I'm embarrassed by how happy I was when the electricity came back on. -ethan 8/28/11
- Is it my imagination or is IOZ way more open about genuinely caring about things since his return? -ethan 8/26/11
- Does Firefox constantly tell British people that they're spelling labour and programme and theatre wrong? -ethan 8/25/11
- There is a huge (and hugely important) difference between knowing that events a, b, and c happened between years x and y, and understanding that they were happening at the same time. -ethan 8/24/11
- Among the many things bugging me about the crappy novel I'm reading is that it keeps referring to a woman whose "late teens" were "forty years ago" as a "little old lady." Come on now, she's 59 at the oldest. -ethan 8/22/11
- Spending a day in the woods is the best thing in the world. -ethan 8/21/11
- Maria Mies: "Powerless groups, particularly if they are totally integrated within a system of power and exploitation, find it difficult to define reality differently from the powerful." -ethan 8/20/11
- The funniest sentence in Frankenstein: "I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition." -ethan 8/18/11
- Chumbawamba: "Nothing ever burned down by itself/Every fire needs a little bit of help." -ethan 8/18/11
- We'll see if I use this. Idea stolen from Davidly. -ethan 8/18/11
6 comments:
Definitely worth it. His utopianism is a turn-off for some - Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Friedrich Kittler's academic books (Gramophone, Film, Typewriter is especially worth a look - I prefer to anything McLuhan wrote) recast his ideas more pessimistically - but Understanding Media is the place to start. Influential book for his hot/cool media distinction and his argument that media technologies are extensions of the central nervous system. For what it's worth, a number of David Cronenberg's films - Videodrome and eXistenZ in particular - bear the stamp of McLuhan's thought.
Maybe consider starting with Walter Ong, a student of McLuhan's. His "Orality and Literacy" is partly an effort to lay some groundwork for McLuhan after the fact.
McCluhan is definitely worth reading, though it has been decades since I've done so. His analysies and descriptions still pop into my head regularly. Best place to start? Annie Hall.
I'll second Jonathan above -- Understanding Media is a great starting point for exploring McLuhan's ideas (and, though tastes may vary, a pretty good ending point as well).
I went through a rabid McLuhan phase as a young man, but going back to his work now I have to say that Understanding Media was the only book of his that I read that really stands up well today. But it does, indeed, stand up pretty well, as long as you can handle his impressionistic style.
Thanks, people--based on this advice I think I'll pick up Understanding Media, and if I have difficulty with it I'll regress to the Ong. Thanks again!
Oh, and: haha, Annie Hall.
Post a Comment