The Book of Probes

Rating:
Summary: read this book
Review: "Like Kafka and Freud, McLuhan is a writer who is often referred to or quoted without being understood, resulting in a shorthand for cultural conditions that everyone recognizes but few can articulate. This title provides a refreshing representation of the philosopher's work, artfully arraying his ideas as brief statements in the space of the page and setting them against stunning imagery and design work by David Carson."

Rating:
Summary: Carson Schmarson
Review: Don't send anything to David Carson that you need back, he likes to "lose" things.

Rating:
Summary: Carson Schmarson
Review: Don't send anything to David Carson that you need back, he likes to "lose" things.

Rating:
Summary: A Useful Tool
Review: First of all, I'm baffled about previous posters claiming Carson is not the designer here with no explanation for the charge. Secondly, does it really matter if Carson assistants contributed under his guidance (if that be the case)?

I'm a big fan of Marshall McLuhan and Carson, so I was pre-disposed to a welcome reception of this volume, and indeed I feel it delivers the goods. At times Carson's designs appear perhaps unnecessarily minimalist, until one considers what must be his reverence for the top billing - McLuhan's probes. McLuhan's 'probes' are ironizable (self-deconstructing) conceptual assertions intended to serve the phenomenological purpose of disclosing new percepts about the world. And in this way the book delivers effectively if used as such.

Happy probing..

Rating:
Summary: who really designed this book
Review: High praise to Gingko Press for such a beautiful book in both construction and graphics, a retrieval and development on the original Quentin Fiore collaborations of the sixties. And this is no ordinary book of quotations, organized by topic or chronology. Each quote indeed acts as a probe for the reader, and of the reader; and collectively each of the hundreds of isolated insights echo and haunt the others. The effect is similar to the famous Monday night seminars; close the book and you are not quite sure what you've learned, but walk around and the way you see the culture has been changed. For the literati, there is an introduction and an important essay by W. T. Gordon describing McLuhan's debt to de Saussure's linquistics. But this is not a book for the scholars and their after-the-crime-has-been-committed analysis. This is a book for the streets, not the ivory tower, for the poets and novelists, the misfits and malcontents of the digital consensus. It's a good review for those familar with McLuhan, and should be a fine introduction to a new generation of independent media scholars.

Rating:
Summary: a beautiful, insightful book for the post-literate era
Review: High praise to Gingko Press for such a beautiful book in both construction and graphics, a retrieval and development on the original Quentin Fiore collaborations of the sixties. And this is no ordinary book of quotations, organized by topic or chronology. Each quote indeed acts as a probe for the reader, and of the reader; and collectively each of the hundreds of isolated insights echo and haunt the others. The effect is similar to the famous Monday night seminars; close the book and you are not quite sure what you've learned, but walk around and the way you see the culture has been changed. For the literati, there is an introduction and an important essay by W. T. Gordon describing McLuhan's debt to de Saussure's linquistics. But this is not a book for the scholars and their after-the-crime-has-been-committed analysis. This is a book for the streets, not the ivory tower, for the poets and novelists, the misfits and malcontents of the digital consensus. It's a good review for those familar with McLuhan, and should be a fine introduction to a new generation of independent media scholars.

Rating:
Summary: not just kinda bad, really-really ugly
Review: Oh no David Carson- its really over. The end has come- well, not of print... Leave McLuhan alone. This book is terrible, really terrible. The design is a mess. Reading McLuhan should never be a chore. This one should go straight to the landfill-- Has anyone else seen it? Don't you agree?

Rating:
Summary: Keep Probing for McLuhan
Review: Reading the advance hype for this book got me very excited. At last! I can understand Marshall McLuhan! Don't get me wrong. It's not that I haven't encountered MM before, but understanding him eluded me. I had hoped for more deluxe versions of the Quentin Fiore collaborations: War and Peace in the Global Village and The Medium is the Massage. But instead of timely, interesting photos, David Carson resorts to typography to frame pithy little McLuhan epigrams. Like those other two books, you at least get your shots of MM one line at a time, and some of the lines are very memorable indeed. Yes, I'm convinced Marshall McLuhan was a prophet (small "P" or maybe big "p"), and that everything he said has already happened. We live in a global village full of hot and cool media; the medium is the message. How obvious it all seems. Reading this book is ancient history. It's already happened. I just wish I could understand it better. Don't bother with the DaVinci code. Crack the McLuhan code and we will all know what's going on. This book reinvents "coffee table books"--it's an 8 inch square two inches thick--so it goes well on little coffee tables from Ikea. I see why they didn't use photos--Corbis owns them all, unlike the public domain galleries in the two earlier books cited (which dazzlingly show more than they tell). Someone new to McLuhan, finding Probes on the tiny coffee table, would probably drink it in, like someone quaffing a particularly good drink. But having finished the tumbler, they'd likely wander off to find the hostess and a refill, asking where she learned her mixology. Those reading, or rather encountering, Probes will also be left inquiring about McLuhan, and probing for more understanding.

Rating:
Summary: who really designed this book
Review: The design in this book is great and was obviously not really designed by David Carson at ALL.