Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
From Free net encyclopedia
Understanding Media is a book by Marshall McLuhan. It is the source of the phrase "The medium is the message" meaning that available media shape human activity, more so than what media are used for. The book also predicts the upheaval of local cultures against growingly globalized values. The contents of the book have greatly influenced writers and social analysts.
In Part One, McLuhan discusses the differences between hot and cold media and the ways that one medium translates the content of another medium. In other words, "the content of a medium is always another medium".
In Part Two, McLuhan analyzes each medium (in existence in 1964) in a manner that exposes the form, rather than the content of each medium. In order, McLuhan covers The Spoken Word, The Written Word (as in a manuscript or incunabulum), Roads and Paper Routes, Numbers, Clothing, Housing, Money, Clocks, The Print (as in pictorial lithograph or woodcut), Comics, The Printed Word (as in typography, Wheel Bicycle and Airplane, The Photograph, The Press, Motorcar, Ads, Games, Telegraph, The Typewriter, The Telephone, The Phonograph, Movies, Radio, Television, Weapons, and Automation.
Throughout Understanding Media, McLuhan uses historical quotes and anecdotes to illustrate the ways in which new media change the perceptions of societies, with specific focus on the form of each medium as opposed to the information that is transferred by each medium. For example, McLuhan examines television as an extension of the movie, with the exception that the visual quality of television as a medium is much less resolute than a movie as it would be seen in a theatre. Whereas a movie extends man's vision to a high degree and is thus "hot", a television image with less detail requires the viewer to fill in more details with their imagination and is therefore a "cool" medium.
See also
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud makes a similar and more in-depth analysis of comics using the comic medium itself.