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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
Had a hard time following the authors train of thought
Sure it’s prescient and on the nose – I suspect now more than ever, particularly with quotes like:
“Real, total war has become information war” and “Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community’s need to know”; but its more than that. It’s invigorating and shot through with a clarity I don’t recall the likes of ‘Understanding Media’ having.
“Real, total war has become information war” and “Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community’s need to know”; but its more than that. It’s invigorating and shot through with a clarity I don’t recall the likes of ‘Understanding Media’ having.
informative
inspiring
I read this for an essay I'm writing for uni, so I'm not rating this – but I do think this was an interesting little book. It's formatted really artistically, with lots of photos and playing with fonts and even mirrored text. It was interesting to read their view on media and technology, it was written in the 1960s but it could (in some cases) easily be applied to today's world. Just substitute "television" for "TikTok" and you're basically there.
Top tier visual design, and I really like the techniques for communication laid out in the beginning. I feel like they're so standard now that it's interesting to hear them proposed as alternative. It was very interesting to read how they thought media would effect society, knowing how much crazier things would get.
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
If you are a fan of Adam Curtis documentaries this is a book for you.
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
This was a curious book about the impending information age written in the '60s. With all the odd pictures and typography, reading it kinda felt like walking through a modern art museum.
"All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments."
"At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just too slow to be relevant or effective."
"Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay."
"An astronomer looking through a 200-inch telescope exclaimed that it was going to rain. His assistant asked, "How can you tell?" "Because my corns hurt."'
"The end of the line.
The railway radically altered the personal outlooks and patterns of social interdependence. It bred and nurtured the American Dream. It created totally new urban, social, and family worlds. New ways of work. New ways of management. New legislation.
The technology of the railway created the myth of a green pasture world of innocence. It satisfied man's desire to withdraw from society, symbolized by the city, to a rural setting where he could recover his animal and natural self. It was the pastoral ideal, a Jeffersonian world, an agrarian democracy which was intended to serve as a guide to social policy. It gave us darkest suburbia and its lasting symbol: the lawnmower."
"There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago." — J. Robert Oppenheimer
"The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves ... You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing." -Socrates, "Phaedrus"
"According to this publisher, many people do not realize how much they could influence others simply by remembering accurately everything they see, hear, or read. Whether in business, at social functions or even in casual conversations with new acquaintances, there are ways in which you can dominate each situation by your ability to remember."
"Most people find it difficult to understand purely verbal concepts. They suspect the ear; they don't trust it. In general we feel more secure when things are visible, when we can "see for ourselves." We admonish children, for instance, to "believe only half of what they see, and nothing of what they hear." All kinds of "shorthand" systems of notation have been developed to help us see what we hear."
""Authorship" — in the sense we know it today, individual intellectual effort related to the book as an economic commodity — was practically unknown before the advent of print technology. Medieval scholars were indifferent to the precise identity of the "books" they studied. In turn, they rarely signed even what was clearly their own. They were a humble service organization. Procuring texts was often a very tedious and time-consuming task. Many small texts were transmitted into volumes of miscellaneous content, very much like "jottings" in a scrapbook, and, in this transmission, authorship was often lost.
The invention of printing did away with anonymity, fostering ideas of literary fame and the habit of considering intellectual effort as private property."
"Television demands participation and involvement in depth of the whole being. It will not work as a background. It engages you. Perhaps this is why so many people feel that their identity has been threatened."
This reminded me of the new normal, which is leaving the tv in the background.. and the new Netflix formula of knowing people are doing this and deciding to make every single scene in a series or movie be very vocally explained.. ugh!!
"At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just too slow to be relevant or effective."
"Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired, it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay."
"An astronomer looking through a 200-inch telescope exclaimed that it was going to rain. His assistant asked, "How can you tell?" "Because my corns hurt."'
"The end of the line.
The railway radically altered the personal outlooks and patterns of social interdependence. It bred and nurtured the American Dream. It created totally new urban, social, and family worlds. New ways of work. New ways of management. New legislation.
The technology of the railway created the myth of a green pasture world of innocence. It satisfied man's desire to withdraw from society, symbolized by the city, to a rural setting where he could recover his animal and natural self. It was the pastoral ideal, a Jeffersonian world, an agrarian democracy which was intended to serve as a guide to social policy. It gave us darkest suburbia and its lasting symbol: the lawnmower."
"There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago." — J. Robert Oppenheimer
"The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves ... You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing." -Socrates, "Phaedrus"
"According to this publisher, many people do not realize how much they could influence others simply by remembering accurately everything they see, hear, or read. Whether in business, at social functions or even in casual conversations with new acquaintances, there are ways in which you can dominate each situation by your ability to remember."
"Most people find it difficult to understand purely verbal concepts. They suspect the ear; they don't trust it. In general we feel more secure when things are visible, when we can "see for ourselves." We admonish children, for instance, to "believe only half of what they see, and nothing of what they hear." All kinds of "shorthand" systems of notation have been developed to help us see what we hear."
""Authorship" — in the sense we know it today, individual intellectual effort related to the book as an economic commodity — was practically unknown before the advent of print technology. Medieval scholars were indifferent to the precise identity of the "books" they studied. In turn, they rarely signed even what was clearly their own. They were a humble service organization. Procuring texts was often a very tedious and time-consuming task. Many small texts were transmitted into volumes of miscellaneous content, very much like "jottings" in a scrapbook, and, in this transmission, authorship was often lost.
The invention of printing did away with anonymity, fostering ideas of literary fame and the habit of considering intellectual effort as private property."
"Television demands participation and involvement in depth of the whole being. It will not work as a background. It engages you. Perhaps this is why so many people feel that their identity has been threatened."
This reminded me of the new normal, which is leaving the tv in the background.. and the new Netflix formula of knowing people are doing this and deciding to make every single scene in a series or movie be very vocally explained.. ugh!!
Outside of the first five pages or so, this was a disappointment. I can't figure out what this book is supposed to be, even though I know it to be somewhat revolutionary in its time. Is it on purpose? Do I just not get it? (possible!) In any case, not for me.