Despite the fact that many have buried him prematurely like some madman in an Edgar Allen Poe story, Marshall McLuhan was, and is, one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of the 20th century. McLuhan pioneered the study of Media, unified Art and Science, and warned readers about this televised, computerised world. In the wake of the centennial celebration of McLuhan's life, it is appropriate to bring back the basics of his teachings. This book culminates in a rich translation of McLuhan's examination of how media turned the planet into the Global Village.
Marshall McLuhan was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of the 20th century. He was so far ahead of his time that he predicted the future and offered a critique of human behavior in a media saturated world that is perhaps more valuable in today’s Internet age than it was in his own time. McLuhan pioneered the study of Media, unified Art and Science, and warned us about the perils of a televised, computerized, famous-for-15-minutes, social media world. A world where we would live in each other’s faces, and become so alike, so isolated, so anonymous that violence would become a scream of identity, a way of saying, “I am not invisible.” McLuhan tried to teach us to guard against these dehumanizing, debasing effects of technology, and a thousand other things, but we got reality television anyway. The centennial celebration of McLuhan’s life and the re-release of his books has led to a surge of new interest in his thinking and teachings. McLuhan For Beginners provides an essential introduction that is clear, comprehensive, and easy to remember. It is full of wise and witty art by Susan Willmarth that is a perfect match to W. Terrence Gordon’s writing. McLuhan envisioned the media generated Global Village before it existed, and no one since McLuhan has described its allure and pitfalls better.
Marshall McLuhan was dubbed a media guru when he came to prominence in the 1960s. The Woodstock generation found him cool; their parents found him perplexing. By 1963, McLuhan was Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto and would be a public intellectual on the international stage for more than a decade, then linked forever to his two best known coinages: the global village and the medium is the message. Taken as a whole, McLuhan's writings reveal a profound coherence and illuminate his unifying vision for the study of language, literature, and culture, grounded in the broad understanding of any medium or technology as an extension of the human body. McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed is a close reading of all of his work with a focus on tracing the systematic development of his thought. The overriding objective is to clarify all of McLuhan's thinking, to consolidate it in a fashion which prevents misreading, and to open the way to advancing his own program: ensuring that the world does not sleepwalk into the twenty-first century with nineteenth-century perceptions.
When first published, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century.
Author Terrence Gordon begins with a lucid definition of language and proceeds to examine how language becomes the subject matter of linguisitics. Topics include the contrast between writing and speech and elementary lessons in different levels of analysis from sounds to sentences. Here, absurd fictions are explored and the borderlands between linguistics and philosophy are investigated.
More than just a detailed life story, this fine and carefully written biography actually does justice to McLuhan's ideas. Gordon evocatively portrays McLuhan's central place in the ferment of the 1960s and explains the formation of his brilliant insights into the media. Escape Into Understanding is a discriminating and passionate portrait of one of the 20th Century's truly great men. It traces McLuhan's life from its beginning in the prairie city of Edmonton, Alberta, through his education at Cambridge and his teaching career in America to his startling breakthroughs in communication while at the University of Toronto. Wherever he went, McLuhan left the indelible memory of his passion for learning as a vital legacy among colleagues, friends and acquaintances. This is the man Gordon successfully evokes in this superb biography.
Since its publication in 1939, countless would-be readers of "Finnegans Wake" - James Joyce's masterwork, which consumed a third of his life - have given up after a few pages, dismissing it as a "perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first "key" or guide to entering the fascinating, disturbing, marvelously rich world of "Finnegans Wake." The authors break down Joyce's "unintelligible" book page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up thoughtful interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary. They outline the book's basic action, and then simplify -- and clarify -- its complex web of images and allusions. "A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake" is the latest addition to the "Collected Works of Joseph Campbell" series.
A concise, accessible introduction to the great linguist who shaped the study of language for the 20th century, Saussure for Beginners puts the challenging ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) into clear and illuminating terms, focusing on the unifying principles of his teachings and showing how his thoughts on linguistics migrated to anthropology. Ferdinand de Saussure’s work is so powerful that it not only redefined modern linguistics, it also opened our minds to new ways of approaching anthropology, literary criticism, and psychoanalysis. Saussure felt that 19th century linguistics avoided hard questions about what language is and how it works. By 1911, he had taught a general linguistics course only three times. Upon his death, however, his students were so inspired by his teachings that they published them as the “Course in General Linguistics.” Saussure For Beginners takes you through this course, points out the unifying principles, and shows how these ideas migrated from linguistics to other subjects.
"Key Themes in Media Theory is wonderfully wide-ranging and deservedly destined to become a key text for students of Media Studies." Professor John Storey, University of Sunderland, UK "The very best text books are not just summaries of complex ideas for a student audience or an introduction to a critical canon; the very best add something to the canon they reflect upon, and Dan Laughey’s Key Themes in Media Theory is one such book. [It] is not a means to an end, as many such books can be. Rather it is a motivational primer, and one that should send both students and teachers heading to the library toread the theorists presented here again, for the first time." Richard Berger, Art, Design, Media; The Higher Education Academy, UK What is media theory? How do media affect our actions, opinions and beliefs? In what ways do media serve powerful political and economic interests? Is media consumerism unhealthy or is it empowering? Key Themes in Media Theory provides a thorough and critical introduction to the key theories of media studies. It is unique in bringing together different schools of media theory into a single, comprehensive text, examining in depth the ideas of key media theorists such as Lasswell, McLuhan, Hall, Williams, Barthes, Adorno, Baudrillard and Bourdieu. Using up-to-date case studies the book embraces media in their everyday cultural forms – music, internet, film, television, radio, newspapers and magazines – to enable a clearer view of the ‘big picture’ of media theory. In ten succinct chapters Dan Laughey discusses a broad range of themes, issues and perspectives that inform our contemporary understanding of media production and consumption. These include: Behaviourism and media effects Feminist media theory Postmodernity and information society Political economy Media consumerism With images and diagrams to illustrate chapter themes, examples that apply media theory to media practice, recommended reading at the end of every chapter, and a useful glossary of key terms, this book is the definitive guide to understanding media theory.
