Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

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Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 1,267 ratings · 111 reviews

This reissue of Understanding Media marks the thirtieth anniversary (1964-1994) of Marshall McLuhan's classic expose on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media. Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about h...more

Paperback, 389 pages

Published October 24th 1994 by MIT Press (MA) (first published 1964)

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Jan 24, 2012 Joshua rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: infosci, media

This was a frustrating read. Lots of intriguing ideas, but presented with vague language and very little supporting evidence. Sometimes while reading it I was unsure if I was reading the profound thoughts of a genius that was above my comprehension, the ramblings of a mad man, or just the drivel of a hack who thought he was a lot more clever than he actually was.

The scholarship in this book is embarrassingly sloppy. At times he makes big claims with absolutely no evidence to support them. When h...more This was a frustrating read. Lots of intriguing ideas, but presented with vague language and very little supporting evidence. Sometimes while reading it I was unsure if I was reading the profound thoughts of a genius that was above my comprehension, the ramblings of a mad man, or just the drivel of a hack who thought he was a lot more clever than he actually was.

The scholarship in this book is embarrassingly sloppy. At times he makes big claims with absolutely no evidence to support them. When he does offer evidence it is often anecdotal, with no reference to anything concrete. He'll write something like "a study was conducted in Canada a few years back in which X happened," and then use that as solid proof that X is universal. Come one man! Where's the citation? You expect me to believe the outrageous claims you're making with no proof? I felt like I was reading cult literature at times. What's more, some of his claims, without a good understanding of the context, can be taken as quite racist.

I read one defense of his lack of evidence which argued that he came from the humanist tradition (he was an English professor) which does not rely on the scientific methods of hypothesis and experimentation, etc. That's a terrible excuse. If you're going to start spouting off about cognitive science and social psychology you better bring some hard evidence to support your claims or no one will take you seriously.

I really want to give this book a higher rating, because some of his ideas are very interesting and sound plausible and I do think I have learned to look at media and world history in a new way. But I could not in good faith recommend this book to a friend unless they were hardcore about media studies. I could possibly forgive the lack of evidence and recommend it to someone with a caveat regarding such, but his terrible prose is perhaps an even bigger hurdle to get over than his credibility. He presents his ideas in metaphors, but, because of the nature of his topics, sometimes it's difficult to be sure if he is being literal or metaphorical. This may be cute to some, but it is embarrassingly bad for a scientific text. Furthermore, many of his theories are contradictory, which makes it even more difficult to understand or take seriously.

I wish someone would go through this book, pluck the interesting and plausible ideas from it and present them in a clear way that exposes the contradictions and areas that require more research for support, because there is a lot of good food for thought in the pages of this book. Unfortunately, I don't think those morsels are worth the effort of reading this book.(less)

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Mar 23, 2012 Mike Jensen marked it as books-abandoned · review of another edition

This is one of the most important books of social theory from the middle of the last century, so why didn't I finish it? After all, it is about time I finally got around to it since I write about media.

First, I found it dated. The media has advanced far beyond the state that McLuhan covers in this book, making the book seem obsolete in many ways. Second, I simply dislike his assumptive style. He assumes as proven without proving. Unlike the first complaint, that fault is built into book. Third,...more

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Jun 17, 2013 George Walker rated it 5 of 5 stars

Although this book was written in 1964 and much of the content is obsolete in the face of new media, it is still a pioneering study in media theory. McLuhan proposes that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study (the iPad is more important then the eBooks that it carries?). In his book McLuhan suggests that a medium changes the society not by the content delivered through it, but by the of the medium itself. McLuhan example of a light bulb illustrates his point....more

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Apr 18, 2013 Elisabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've pulled it out of a box to re-read after almost forty years! I remember being so intrigued by this when it was first popular. Fascinating book by the man famous for saying "the medium is the message" and then titling a book, The Medium is the Massage! Ah! To reread some of my under-linings now:

"Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the content of the medium is like the juicy piece of meat ca...more

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Mar 23, 2012 Ugh rated it 2 of 5 stars

This made for a very frustrating reading experience. At times McLuhan has a tremendously opaque writing style, preferring to make many of his assertions first through others' words in great associative leaps that serve to obfuscate rather than illustrate, and then to return to the same topic again and again in the hope of conveying and proving by sheer weight of repetition rather than through clarity of expression. He also doesn't use references (assuming of course that my edition hasn't just be...more This made for a very frustrating reading experience. At times McLuhan has a tremendously opaque writing style, preferring to make many of his assertions first through others' words in great associative leaps that serve to obfuscate rather than illustrate, and then to return to the same topic again and again in the hope of conveying and proving by sheer weight of repetition rather than through clarity of expression. He also doesn't use references (assuming of course that my edition hasn't just been unhelpfully stripped of them), which means that you have to simply swallow everything he feeds you, and at times he serves up some very large mouthfuls. To take just one example that's fresh in the memory, in a chapter on television McLuhan asserts that "One of the most extraordinary developments since TV in England has been the upsurge of regional dialects. [...] Their sudden prominence in England in areas in which previously one had heard only standard English is one of the most significant cultural events of our time." No reference, no attribution, no support. Of course, I could research the point myself, but I shouldn't have to.

So there are style issues, and there are also content issues. In some respects McLuhan was famously spot on - 'global village' is now part of the common lexicon, as electronic communication has indeed shrunk the world to the status of the mediaeval village - but in toto he was hit and miss, as exemplified by his oversimplification that 'the medium is the message' (fair enough, he seems to have been among the first to have really studied media as separate from message, and so perhaps he was merely exaggerating to make his point, but still, come on), and it's really of very little interest to read predictions and foggily-worded theories that long-ago proved false.

UM isn't all prediction, it's also history and current social analysis, but unfortunately it's also hit and miss in these respects - more subjectively, of course. For me, McLuhan is at his (nevertheless still patchy) best when he's taking a fresh look at historical events from the new electronic perspective, even if you do have to take everything he proffers with a pinch of salt. He did have many interesting ideas, such as around the effects of literacy on mankind's sensory experience, and some chapters fly right by. It's those ideas that are less convincing that become very tiresome when laboured, such as the suggestion that media are either 'hot' or 'cold' depending on their intensity in any single sensory sphere. In itself this isn't so silly, but many of the extrapolations are, and there are also quite a few contradictions to boot. By the time we're told that paperbacks are cooler media than hardbacks and European cars cooler than American, we have long since left reality far behind.

Perhaps some of the fault is mine, and I should have known better what to expect from one of America's most legendary nutjobs. Well, if anyone is reading this review before reading the book, here's a tip: do yourself a favour and get an abridged version. I predict that you'll thank me for it.(less)

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Apr 20, 2013 Joy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: orals, theory

"As the printing press cried out for nationalism, so did the radio cry out for tribalism." This is just a small taste of the highly comedic historical generalizations that await you in reading this book! Here's another great one: "The hotting-up of the medium of writing to repeatable print intensity led to nationalism and the religious wars of the sixteenth century." Thank god for that concise explanation!!

Okay, I know I'm being unfair...McLuhan's 1964 publication was tremendously important, and...more "As the printing press cried out for nationalism, so did the radio cry out for tribalism." This is just a small taste of the highly comedic historical generalizations that await you in reading this book! Here's another great one: "The hotting-up of the medium of writing to repeatable print intensity led to nationalism and the religious wars of the sixteenth century." Thank god for that concise explanation!!

Okay, I know I'm being unfair...McLuhan's 1964 publication was tremendously important, and had a great impact on many fields of research. For that, it can be considered an important primary historical source that can help us understand the historiography of media theory over the last 60 years. Yes, it's full of interesting ideas! But let's not mince words about the fact that McLuhan's assertions are mostly....well...a bit untenable. Lending so much agency to media forms themselves all but eclipses human politics and culture. Also, it fails to account for the diversity in media use with respect to both governance and everyday practice.

What's so important about a book that contains many, if not mostly, untenable claims? McLuhan's most famous thesis, that "the medium is the message," argued that medial forms aren't so important for their "content" but for how they restructure social life. I think this insight is one that remains relevant. McLuhan also though that "human senses, of which all are media extensions...configure the awareness and experience of each one of us (21)." In this way, media forms would come to stand in for our natural senses. This could result in overrepresentation of some senses, such as the eye via writing. According to McLuhan, the substitution of the eye for the ear in the transition from oral to written culture (not entirely sure what either of these would actually be) led to an intense focus on the visual in modern culture. At the same time, as the media forms perform the work of the senses, our "natural" sense diminishes, or becomes numb after a brief period of overstimulation and habituation. McLuhan likens this to watching a movie, then exiting the theater and feeling like real life is dull in comparison. McLuhan thought that media forms would fundamentally alter our perception and experience of the world. For McLuhan, writing created "individualism and introspection," among other things. TV causes us to lose our "habit of visual perspective as a sensory modality." Etc. McLuhan goes on to discuss clothing, houses, infrastructure, money, clocks photographs, cars, and more- all as extensions of some basic bodily function. McLuhan repeatedly refers to the holistic state of man before the advent of printing as belonging to "tribal man." Mediated man, in contrast, is fragmented, differentiated, diffused, and contained. McLuhan definitely has a bit of a romantic notion of the "tribal man" as well as a distastefully hierarchic view of humans as divided by categories of civilization. But this shouldn't be surprising for 1964, and indeed McLuhan's interest in human primitivity with respect to senses and technology is an interesting potential historical research topic in its own right.

Obviously, I don't buy much of McLuhan's causal account, nor do I find his universal characterization of "Man's" psychic state convincing. However, I do think that with careful research we can try to seriously investigate the impact of, say, the internet on forms of life and subjectivity while avoiding McLuhan's extreme (and indefensible) technological determinism. (less)

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Jun 11, 2007 Zach rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: landed gentry

It's between this critique of Media and Benjamin's On Hashish, one of them has the answers. He has the organs transplanted in formaldehyde under a red, hot light while the test samples are chilled in the refrigerator. He drinks whatever Tom Wolfe is having, and says a whole lot that cannot be said in another way. If you want my opinion know that I don't trust him, he's over fifty!

The one question afraid to ask, "how am I supposed to remember all of this stuff?!"

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Apr 18, 2013 Rafael Parreira rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Somos realmente moldados, amputados ou ampliados pelos meios que utilizamos, sejam eles meios de comunicação, ferramentas ou instrumentos? Para McLuhan sim. E essa mudança sempre acontece, com consequências não só para os indivíduos e a sociedade, mas também para os meios e ferramentas anteriores, que terão que se adaptar. Ou desaparecer. Além de uma longa análise sobre o impacto de diversos meios (roda, cinema, TV etc.) na nossa civilização, o autor faz uma distinção entre duas eras, a mecânica...more

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May 26, 2011 Andrew added it

Shelves: policy-and-social-commentary, media-and-internet-studies

The problem with so much au courant media theory is that it a) goes out of date real fast, and b) is frequently falsified within ten years. McLuhan sometimes hits the mark-- becoming an early predictor of, among other things, the Internet-- but also totally fails at predicting the future the other half of the time.

Some of his observations are quite astute. Other observations seem like meaningless, foundationless claims. Yes, there were vast cultural shifts with the arrival of the printing press...more

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Mar 10, 2009 Micelle Miseracorde rated it 5 of 5 stars

In the 1960's, when normal (i.e. "non-intellectual") people could tell you who Marshall McLuhan was, the word most likely to be associated with his name would be "incomprehensabilty." This is not without reason.

Reading McLuhan is indeed a little like reading stereo assembly instructions from the future. Made all the more puzzling by the fact that virtually none of the words he uses are unfamiliar, his concepts nonetheless at first seem to be out of the reader's league, if not of another sport,...more

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Mar 01, 2013 michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

McLuhan is a nut. 50% of what he says is completely unintelligible bollocks, 20% of it is kind of interesting throw-away, and the other 30% is the most forward-thinking genius that has yet to be realized. it's kind of like he was looking into the future through fogged lenses...couldn't quite make everything out, but a good enough ideas.

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Nov 01, 2012 Bucket rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: grad-school, culture, history, non-fiction, philosophy, reviewed, technology, media, communication

McLuhan wrote this in the 1960s to describe the state of media (which was then beginning to take on its still rapidly evolving electronic form. He coins now well-known phrases like "the medium is the message" and "global village." He was also the one who first said that if archeologists looked at our society a thousand years from now, they would find that our advertising is what says the most about our values and beliefs.

I was alternately fascinated and sceptical as I read this book. Much of it...more McLuhan wrote this in the 1960s to describe the state of media (which was then beginning to take on its still rapidly evolving electronic form. He coins now well-known phrases like "the medium is the message" and "global village." He was also the one who first said that if archeologists looked at our society a thousand years from now, they would find that our advertising is what says the most about our values and beliefs.

I was alternately fascinated and sceptical as I read this book. Much of it is fantastic - well-researched, in-depth, and brilliant.

For example, all of McLuhan's descriptions of how "literacy creates very much simpler kinds of people than those that develop in the complex web of ordinary tribal and oral societies." He also says that "language does for intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body. It enables them to move from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement. Language extends and amplifies man but it also divides his faculties. His collective consciousness or intuitive awareness is diminished by this technical extension of consciousness that is speech."

McLuhan describes in depth how mechanization taught us to think in very linear terms and to see life as a series of causes and effects. As the electronic world began to take over in the 50s and 60s, McLuhan predicted many of the ways it would change us (now in 2012 we are tied to our various "screens," we deal with constant "media fallout," and we expect things to be instant, which has ended our reliance on lineality and allowed us to greatly expand our knowledge and collective awareness).

Other parts of the book, however, are dated or confusing and the book as a whole is a little bit repetitive. There were also plenty of parts of this that were completely over my head.

I very much enjoyed McLuhan's multi-disciplined approach to his subject. He freely quotes Shakespeare and James Joyce along with the academics and philosophers I expected.

A few other quotations that I want to hold onto:

"The instant character of electric information movement does not enlarge, but involves, the family of man in the cohesive state of village living."

"Words are a kind of information retrieval that can range over the total environment and experience at high speed."

"What we have today, instead of a social consciousness electrically ordered, however, is a private subconsciousness or individual 'point of view' rigorously imposed by older mechanical technology. This is a perfectly natural result of 'culture lag' or conflict, in a world suspended between two technologies."

"Just as we now try to control atom-bomb fallout, so we will one day try to control media fallout."

Themes: media, mass media, history, literature, philosophy, globalization, technology, tribalism, neuroscience, lineality/causation vs. instant/concurrent(less)

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Apr 10, 2012 Russell rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's hard for me to comment on Understanding Media because I've never read anything quite like it. It's really just a whole bunch of somewhat connected thoughts, observations, and statements. There are many words that McLuhan uses that have a particular definition in the book but are in common usage to mean something else, and he never explains these. That said, once you understand that, once you get a feeling for what McLuhan is doing, Understanding Media is absolutely brilliant. I certainly do...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Ronald rated it 3 of 5 stars

Wow. Talk about a difficult book to read and understand. Looking back, his 1960's insights into the "electric age" are amazing. The stuff this guy anticipated before cable tv, internet, and email arrived is stunning. I usually found one nugget for every two pages. Actual sample sentence: "The visual stress on continuity, uniformity, and connectedness, as it derives from literacy, confronts us with the great technological means of implementing continuity and lineality by fragmented repetition." S...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Logan rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Joycean prose blew my mind. Prettiest philosophy I've read since Nietzsche. Not to mention the ideas, thought written decades ago, still take on a anthropological detachment and reveal things about the world of modern media that you and I are too steeped in to notice. McLuhan redefines 'media,' by the way. Did you know that lightbulbs are media? The most interesting bits are media as self-extension (social media narcissism, anyone?), the level of involvement in different types of media (hot...more

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Nov 22, 2008 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: anthropology, orality, folklore

More in depth review coming, but McLuhan makes much of a distinction between oral culture, writing culture and print culture. He extends this to the change that comes with electronic media (Ong's secondary orality). All human activities and technologies are an extenstion of being. I find some of his conclusions problematic - I hope to address these in the next few months. There are some implications of his ideas for the web as medium - is the web oral or literate based? I am greatly annoyed by h...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Andrew Ives rated it 3 of 5 stars

Apparently one of Canada's brightest minds, McLuhan seems to try to baffle the reader with overly-complex rhetoric about even the simplest of subjects. Take the chapter on comics for instance: this was possibly nearly true about 50yrs ago, but is so far from the truth now, I would argue with almost every sentence. The same could be said to a greater or lesser extent for almost every preceding chapter. Perhaps this book just hasn't dated well, but after reading about 60%, I felt I was being coerc...more

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Mar 11, 2010 The E is currently reading it

Dave Sim (of Cerebus) recommended this book to me when I wrote him as part of my research for a paper. I purchased it immediately. I started reading it a long time later. It's dense material, and since most of my time for reading is fleeting at best, I don't choose it most often, thus it's taking me a long time to get through it. McLuhan has some interesting ideas, and for being published in the 60s, it's amazingly resonant with the modern world. Not all his ideas are easy to swallow, but there...more

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Oct 07, 2009 Liz Theis rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book needs several reads. I am NOT convinced by "Media Hot and Cold", it seems like an arbitrary way to classify media, especially in the digital age.

But for the most part, I pretty much agree with everything McLuhan says, and I'm often surprised how he's predicted the digital age, which he never got to experience. I would love to see what he would write were he around today.

He needs to lay off incorporating Shakespeare and James Joyce quotes into his writing though. He can be a little co...more

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Jan 11, 2010 Thorsten rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: social-science

Written in 1964, this book is startling in it’s prescience and extrapolation of the possibilities of technological growth, and still has much to offer in the understanding of sociological change. The ‘media’ of the title is not the same definition as is now commonly held: Although it does include television, radio and print, McLuhan’s ‘media’ can be taken more broadly to be any tool, technology or invention of man, which he explains as having a primary role in the extension of our senses, commun...more Written in 1964, this book is startling in it’s prescience and extrapolation of the possibilities of technological growth, and still has much to offer in the understanding of sociological change. The ‘media’ of the title is not the same definition as is now commonly held: Although it does include television, radio and print, McLuhan’s ‘media’ can be taken more broadly to be any tool, technology or invention of man, which he explains as having a primary role in the extension of our senses, communications and control, for example he starts out with oral speech and works through examples from use of papyrus and the phonetic alphabet, to the building of roads, housing, money, clocks, printing press, photography, telegraphy, films, radio and the then emerging ubiquity of television.

The main thrust of the book is that society has consistently been blind to the transforming power of new technology to alter the structure of society, instead focussing on whatever content was being broadcast via the medium, hence his well know phrase “the medium is the message”. One of the clearest examples would be the massive transformation of society by the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, which led to the democratisation and diffusion of knowledge to the masses – of course there is some interest in the contents of the books or tracts of the time, but it is the societal shift that is the more important implication of this technology.

The Guttenberg print process is a key theme throughout the book, as McLuhan pinpoints this as the birthplace of industrialisation, individualisation and mechanisation, and in general is the root of all Western society’s psychic mode of thought, it is here he says, that modern man is split from tribal man: Where tribal man held an inclusive view of the world and was located within and was part of the external world, modern man, with the advent of movable type, began a process and acceptance of uniform and lineal modes of thought and action, a process of specialization and fragmentation. According to McLuhan, this breaking down of a cohesive view of the world has alienated modern man from himself and from the rest of society, and this distancing of himself, this separation of “action, without reaction” is what has allowed many of the modern evils of the world such as war and social inequalities.

It is with the birth of electric technology that McLuhan sees the next massive stage of societal upheaval that will rival the changes inculcated by movable type. McLuhan describes the growth of mechanisation as an explosive process as we move further apart and more specialist, but foresaw in electrical technologies a remedy to this, that electrical technology and communication would lead to an implosion, a drawing together of various strands of specialisation, and bring in depth involvement in process and knowledge. It is from here that his other famous phrase arrives, the “global village”. Reading much of his extrapolation of these electrical networks, it’s an uncannily close description to the way the internet and global economy have developed.

Ultimately the most valuable lesson in the book is that we have to stand back and see the larger picture to fully understand how a technology affects us, but the book is also curiously naïve and shot through with a science-fictional optimism that can’t fail to make you smile, with it’s belief that electric technologies would return man to a utopian tribal state of harmony with the world and hold warm fuzzy feeling towards others due to his direct instantaneous link and gestalt about the state of the world, through this inclusive electrical and knowledge field. All-in-all however, a highly recommended read.
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Jul 04, 2009 Ryan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this book to be pretty difficult to get through. For two reasons - a) the ideas within are kind of radical to think about and b) it's not very well written. I say I "liked it" because it was pretty interesting and thought-provoking. But sometimes, it's tough to get on McLuhan's wavelength. This book is famous for coining the term "global village", which has been overused for at least the last 15 years in regards to the Internet.

The premise is a relatively simple one - changes in forms of...more

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Jul 20, 2008 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Marshall McLuhan has suffered the fate of many quotable philosophers and critics – like Nietzsche's pronouncement that “God is dead,” McLuhan's statement that “the medium is the message” has been tossed around by a populace that often fail to appreciate its full complexity. Having now read through the entirety of Understanding Media, it is clear that although McLuhan often takes his pronouncements to unnecessary extreme, he is equally often incredibly insightful, offering up a revolutionary way...more Marshall McLuhan has suffered the fate of many quotable philosophers and critics – like Nietzsche's pronouncement that “God is dead,” McLuhan's statement that “the medium is the message” has been tossed around by a populace that often fail to appreciate its full complexity. Having now read through the entirety of Understanding Media, it is clear that although McLuhan often takes his pronouncements to unnecessary extreme, he is equally often incredibly insightful, offering up a revolutionary way to analyze the effects of technology/media on culture, and moreover is occasionally stunningly prescient.

McLuhan's central argument is that the function of media is an acceleration – in particular, an acceleration of a specific bodily sense function: the telephone as an extension/acceleration of speech, the phonograph as an extension/acceleration of the ear, etc. Yet the increased speed and reach of these particular media radically reorganize human interaction and communication, and therefore society at large. The first section of Understanding Media is spent presenting this overall idea – the second half of the book analyzes a multitude of case studies of media forms.

I find McLuhan's ultimate message that we have utterly failed to understand the way in which media have effected our lives strongly resonates, and unfortunately, seems to have changed little in the 40 yeas since Understanding Media was written. Much of what he predicted about the emergence of electronic media has come to pass (for example, the collapse of the physical newspaper with the advent of near-instantaneous news – although the Internet wasn't even a concept when Understanding Media was written), although not all (McLuhan also predicted that the instantaneous transmission of information would break the American reliance on the automobile, which unfortunately has not come to pass). In fact, the changes in media are happening at a greater pace now than ever before – yet our ignorance about how media is reshaping social interaction remains as strong as ever.

McLuhan's greatest weakness is his tendency to make huge proclamations without providing adequate evidence. Sometimes he presents strong anthropological, sociological, or literary evidence to back up his claims, but not always – sometimes the reader is left somewhat adrift, trying to process the veracity of some bold pronouncement. This is an important failure for a piece of cultural criticism, but the strength of McLuhan's ideas make Understanding Media an important read nonetheless.(less)

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Feb 26, 2009 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

McLuhan was one of the first people to ask questions such as "does it matter if I read Hamlet, watch it in a theater, see a movie version, or see it on TV?" His answer is an emphatic yes. So while some of his work seems a little dated, McLuhan still gets a lot of credit for prodding people to talk about the importance of media. I think part of his reputation stems from the fact that he was prone to making huge blanket pronouncement and predictions (such as "the invention of printing lead to nati...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is my favorite nonfiction book of all time. It is infinitely entertaining and insightful, and I return to it regularly, dated as many of its observations may be. McLuhan writes plainly but still elegantly, with just enough exposition and explanation to keep both beginner and advanced readers hooked. McLuhan did more than invent the "global village" here, he encircled all of civilization's history with his theory of media. It remains a stunning book to this day.

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Dec 05, 2011 Taylor rated it 4 of 5 stars

I would think of this book like a set of tools. McLuhan is providing the reader with a way to better understand and analyze the way the world is changing, technology-wise. I think the first section of the book, in that sense, is the most valuable, which is McLuhan laying out his philosophy and insights (e.g. the medium is the message). The second section is him applying his thinking to different technologies, some which are, admittedly, a little outdated. Nevertheless, it is helpful to try and g...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Rick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading MacLuhan is sort of like reading shakespeare. At first you're like "These words mean nothing I am confused." Then, slowly, his alternative lingo and radically different ways of looking at things start to make sense to you, and things come together. Then your eyes are opened.

Is the medium still the message? Has that time passed? Perhaps. But it's still an amazingly useful book to change the way you think of media, advertising and information.

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Nov 04, 2009 Anthony is currently reading it

I must have started this book 30 and a half times. I have never actually finished the book and it will be a sad day when I do. Every time I come back to it, I feel like a new student of McLuhan and have no idea what I will learn. And I find that, at each beginning, I am deepening my understanding of both media and myself (if differentiated in such terms). I enjoy this book immensely and have replaced the King James version with this title as The Bible.

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Sep 21, 2010 James rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, philosophy, movies, literary-criticism

Seemingly everyone who has reviewed this book has pointed out that Understanding Media is dated. Well of course, but you also have to take into account that McLuhan wasn't writing a guidebook or a scholarly philosophical work, he was simply stating different theories about media and how it influences society; I doubt that he meant it to be read any kind of bible of media studies. That is what makes this book such a fascinating read; McLuhan is a very good writer (with a good sense of humor) and...more

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Feb 27, 2010 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays

"The classified ads (and stock-market quotations) are the bedrock of the press. Should an alternative source of easy access to such diverse daily information be found, the press will fold."

McLuhan published that in 1964, and for the past 10 years of my life, I've watched the truth of his prediction unfold.

This book was written in a different world. Considering this book was written before the Internet, personal computers, cell phones, GPS, video games, digital music, home video, satellite telev...more

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Mar 11, 2010 Amber rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book hurts my head.. in a good way. We are reading it for a class at IIT Institute of Design and having great discussions about what McLuhan was trying to say and how his theories might be interpreted today. Although examples are out-of-date and sometimes pretty questionable from a historical accuracy point of view, it is a great reference to try to understand what his perspective was and see its influence on contemporary thinkers. If you want to understand a theory on how and why technolog...more

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About Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan CC (July 21, 1911 - December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar — a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a communications theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory. McLuhan is known for coining the expressions "the medium is the message" and the "global village".

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Books by Marshall McLuhan

The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man

The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century

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“The medium is the message.” — 17 people liked it

“Art is anything you can get away with.” — 14 people liked it

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