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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
funny
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
McLuhan is endlessly fascinating. I really need to read more of his work, but this book is a great way to get your feet wet in the sea of ideas.
informative
inspiring
reflective
The book was more eye opening then I first thought I’d be. It really makes you stop and think about how you’re impacted by the media around you
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
No words can describe this book, fantastic read
Just read in one sitting on the long train ride from Clementi to Bedok. A whirlwind of ideas at once fascinating and unsettling, McLuhan makes our familiar digital environment suddenly so strange. In doing so he brings what he calls this invisible “environment” more clearly into view by setting it alongside past times and places. Unexpectedly, McLuhan articulates a sparkling hope in the way modern media brings the world together as a “global village” more suited to our primordial nature. Lots to ponder and question further.
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
Weirdly relevant writing on 60s media culture from a guy I hated reading about in college.
'Our "Age of Anxiety" is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools - with yesterday's concepts.'
I came to know about McLuhan, thanks to Neil Postman's work called Amusing ourselves to Death. Neil Postman, in his work, discussed extensively about the various forms of sources used by the people for the pursuit of knowledge and truth over the times of human civilization starting from the oral tradition, writing, typographical, telegraphical, televising traditions briefly. It must be noted each of the traditions had their own flaws and perks. Postman stood his case for the writing and typographical traditions for the coherent informative essence and for promoting systematic contextual understanding and thinking among the traditional participants which he felt lacked especially in the television showbusiness culture. He blames the TV culture for frivolity, inability to do authentic actions and obtain solutions for real world problems and most of which most people would feel relevant. McLuhan and Postman says almost the same thing except they don't agree with their respective conclusions because of their respective standpoints.
We live in a world where most of these traditions are well inside the melting pot of modernity illusions. Say, for instance, though written witness statements are allowed in the judicial courtrooms around the world, most of the cases obligate witnesses' presence in the court and their oral statement indicating the implemented myth of pre-socratic traditions.
McLuhan's idea arise the notion of analysing other traditions with the existing or previous environmental traditions which would always lead to problems. He starts from Plato accusing the oral tradition after the trial and killing of Socrates.
'What the Greeks meant by "poetry" was radically different from what we mean by poetry. Their "poetic" expression was a product of a collective psyche and mind. The mimetic form, a technique that exploited rhythm, meter and music, achieved the desired psychological response in the listener. Listeners could memorize with greater ease what was sung than what was said. Plato attacked this method because it discouraged disputation and argument. It was in his opinion the chief obstacle to abstract, speculative reasoning - he called it "a poison, and an enemy of the people.”
He says there would always be conflict when there's major shift in traditions especially during the transitions throughout the history.
McLuhan puts forward basically we all have been used to the visually biased knowledge and truth tradition since the dawn of our civilization.
"Books are the extension of the eye.'
Also, he compares the contextual fidelity of traditional, 'The ear favours no particular “point of view.” We are enveloped by sound. It forms a seamless web around us.
We hear sounds from everywhere, without ever having to focus.
We can‘t shut out sound automatically. We simply are not equipped with earlids. Where a visual space is an organised continuum of a uniformed connected kind, the ear world is a world of simultaneous relationships.'
He quotes John Cage, "One must be disinterested, accept that a sound is a sound and a man is a man, give up illusions about ideas of order, expressions of sentiment, and all the rest of our inherited aesthetic claptrap."
McLuhan, on the contrary to Postman, showers some critical points pertaining to the writing and typographical tradition that the concept of knowledge become a private property as a form of economic commodity because of the particular tradition and it lead to anonymity from the masses to isolation leading men to inspire and conspire.
He also takes the perceptive aspects of television which Postman considered those brought chaos and disinformation. He talks about TV, "In television, images are projected at you. You're the screen. The image wrap around you. You're the vanishing point. This creates a sort of inwardness, a sort of reverse perceptive which has much in common with oriental art."
He concludes with this,
Somehow the overall format of the book is totally baffling for me when it comes to reading aphorisms, lengthy Paragraphs, photographs, mirrored, inverted pages and comic illustrations at the same time in a same book. Guess, we're all biased in someways. Typographical, in my case.
I came to know about McLuhan, thanks to Neil Postman's work called Amusing ourselves to Death. Neil Postman, in his work, discussed extensively about the various forms of sources used by the people for the pursuit of knowledge and truth over the times of human civilization starting from the oral tradition, writing, typographical, telegraphical, televising traditions briefly. It must be noted each of the traditions had their own flaws and perks. Postman stood his case for the writing and typographical traditions for the coherent informative essence and for promoting systematic contextual understanding and thinking among the traditional participants which he felt lacked especially in the television showbusiness culture. He blames the TV culture for frivolity, inability to do authentic actions and obtain solutions for real world problems and most of which most people would feel relevant. McLuhan and Postman says almost the same thing except they don't agree with their respective conclusions because of their respective standpoints.
We live in a world where most of these traditions are well inside the melting pot of modernity illusions. Say, for instance, though written witness statements are allowed in the judicial courtrooms around the world, most of the cases obligate witnesses' presence in the court and their oral statement indicating the implemented myth of pre-socratic traditions.
McLuhan's idea arise the notion of analysing other traditions with the existing or previous environmental traditions which would always lead to problems. He starts from Plato accusing the oral tradition after the trial and killing of Socrates.
'What the Greeks meant by "poetry" was radically different from what we mean by poetry. Their "poetic" expression was a product of a collective psyche and mind. The mimetic form, a technique that exploited rhythm, meter and music, achieved the desired psychological response in the listener. Listeners could memorize with greater ease what was sung than what was said. Plato attacked this method because it discouraged disputation and argument. It was in his opinion the chief obstacle to abstract, speculative reasoning - he called it "a poison, and an enemy of the people.”
He says there would always be conflict when there's major shift in traditions especially during the transitions throughout the history.
McLuhan puts forward basically we all have been used to the visually biased knowledge and truth tradition since the dawn of our civilization.
"Books are the extension of the eye.'
Also, he compares the contextual fidelity of traditional, 'The ear favours no particular “point of view.” We are enveloped by sound. It forms a seamless web around us.
We hear sounds from everywhere, without ever having to focus.
We can‘t shut out sound automatically. We simply are not equipped with earlids. Where a visual space is an organised continuum of a uniformed connected kind, the ear world is a world of simultaneous relationships.'
He quotes John Cage, "One must be disinterested, accept that a sound is a sound and a man is a man, give up illusions about ideas of order, expressions of sentiment, and all the rest of our inherited aesthetic claptrap."
McLuhan, on the contrary to Postman, showers some critical points pertaining to the writing and typographical tradition that the concept of knowledge become a private property as a form of economic commodity because of the particular tradition and it lead to anonymity from the masses to isolation leading men to inspire and conspire.
He also takes the perceptive aspects of television which Postman considered those brought chaos and disinformation. He talks about TV, "In television, images are projected at you. You're the screen. The image wrap around you. You're the vanishing point. This creates a sort of inwardness, a sort of reverse perceptive which has much in common with oriental art."
He concludes with this,
Spoiler
Somehow the overall format of the book is totally baffling for me when it comes to reading aphorisms, lengthy Paragraphs, photographs, mirrored, inverted pages and comic illustrations at the same time in a same book. Guess, we're all biased in someways. Typographical, in my case.