Digital McLuhan : a guide to the information millennium

Marshall McLuhan died on the last day of 1980, on the doorstep of the personal computer revolution. Yet McLuhan's ideas anticipated a world of media in motion, and its impact on our lives on the dawn of the new millennium.
Paul Levinson examines why McLuhan's theories about media are more important to us today than when they were first written, and why the Wired generation is now turning to McLuhan's work to understand the global village in the digital age.

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Levinson continues the illuminating investigation into the evolution of information technologies and their effects on society that he began in The Soft Edge (1997) by offering a clarifying interpretation of the works of the guru of media studies, Marshall McLuhan. Many of McLuhan's intriguing concepts were difficult to grasp due, in part, to his tangled prose style, but primarily because they were far ahead of their time. Now, nearly 20 years after his death, his ideas have come to vivid life in relationship to the computer revolution. Levinson neatly explicates and makes productive use of McLuhan's theories. He shows how McLuhan's concept of the global village is fully manifest in the Internet, as is his concept of the "discarnate man," the beautiful vision of "light-through" --the hypnotic effect of light passing through glass, whether in stained glass windows, television, or computer screens--and his prediction of an inclusive super media. Always lucid and provocative, Levinson explores the psychological impact of digital technologies as well as their profound effects on work and play. --Donna Seaman

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Somewhat fawning but still insightful, this volume extends the writings and thoughts of McLuhan (1911-80) to the digital age he did not live to see. Levinson briefly knew McLuhan and is clearly a fan; he has written several books seeking to strengthen theoretical perceptions of media. Here he focuses on how one can better understand the present and future by reading McLuhan. Fifteen chapters combine McLuhan's reasoning and the author's insights in discussions of such topics as the role of television in McLuhan's media writing lifetime (1951-80); the medium (the Internet) as content; the mind behind the screen; the decline of the gatekeeper in an era when everyone is--or can be--a publisher; how to perceive McLuhan's "tetrad" or four rules of media in today's complicated world; the Internet as the ultimate global village; and Internet-based education. Indeed, the selection of aspects on which to focus is nearly as broad as McLuhan's own original net. But just as the Canadian theorist refused to be pinned down (I explore, he said, I don't explicate), so too does this volume get diffuse in places. Still, the combined insight of Levinson and McLuhan offers interesting "new" ways to perceive the fast-changing digital scene. For extensive upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and faculty collections. C. Sterling; George Washington University

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In this interesting if narrow work, Levinson (The Soft Edge, LJ 2/1/98) explains why Marshall McLuhans theories about the media are more relevant in todays digital age than when they were first presented during the age of television. Levinson points out that the Internet will be the vehicle for a convergence of books, television, and other media such as the telephone, thus making it much more, much different from any prior media. He then applies McLuhans tetrad, the four laws of media, which shift from warning us to remove our past-tinted glasses when looking at the future to indicating what type of territory we might see when those glasses are removed. McLuhan led the way in understanding the relationship of humans to technology; as Levinson attempts to show, his principles have been validated by the Internetwhich to many readers may already be obvious. Recommended for specialized collections.Joe J. Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Acknowledgements	p. xi
1 Introduction	p. 1
2 The Reluctant Explicator	p. 24
3 Net Content	p. 35
4 The Song of the Alphabet in Cyberspace	p. 44
5 Online Angels	p. 55
6 From Voyeur to Participant	p. 65
7 The Fate of the Center	p. 80
8 The Mind Behind the Screen	p. 95
9 Way Cool Text	p. 105
10 The Rusted Gatekeeper	p. 119
11 Serfs to Surf	p. 132
12 Beauty Machines	p. 145
13 Balinese at Work Online	p. 158
14 Through a Glass, Brightly	p. 173
15 Spirals of Media Evolution	p. 187
Bibliography	p. 204
Index	p. 212

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