War and Peace In the Global Village

Rating:
Summary: Lousy title, great book.
Review: If McLuhan hadn't been dead for almost twenty years, he could have written this book yesterday. He speaks to this moment in time. "We are all robots when uncritically involved with our technologies." He makes the point that we have met the enemy and they is us. He asserts that man has evolved beyond Darwin's limited concept of biological evolution, and we have evolved ourselves with our technology. The computer being an extension of our nervous system, which now senses the whole world. The pain of modern existence is to be found in the strain of this evolution, and therefor, to be for-warned is to be for-armed. "Unlike the animals, man has no nature but his own history. Electronically, this total history is now potentially present in a kind of simultaneous transparency that carries us into a world of what Joyce calls 'heliotropic noughttime.' We have been rapt in 'the artifice of eternity' by placing our nervous system around the entire globe." Tired of wondering why you think life sucks? There is some healing balm hear to be found.

Rating:
Summary: Is Your Brain OK or KO?
Review: Media theorist Marshall McLuhan does a double take on the Massage by doubling his informative view of the media world splicing effect after effect after effect. Beginning locally in the village of small tribal cultures of oratory dominance demonstrating the break of the sensorium which created a tactile society. Moving through history as if fragmented in its own way recapitulating the effects of media which broke up the senses and amputated the limbs of our physical and psychical systems. Although written in 1968, McLuhan moves right into the present times understanding first, electricity as extension of the nervous system and lucidly stating that LSD, the psychedelics of the past are equal in effects to the modern day computer as a recomposure of our being. From our computer realities, one can easily define theirs as an integrated inter-net, linking one another through digital media that is light speed. McLuhan understood the implications of Einsteinian-ENIAC models of the world and distupted the passive television view with this commercial interuption to wake up the senses. Reccomended for McLuhan lovers and those who are still watching TV on a regular basis.

Rating:
Summary: Sheer Brilliance!
Review: Once again, McLuhan and Fiore team up to provide us with an excellent summation of all of the drastic effects of the transition to electric circutry as the prime form of media. I recommend reading The Medium is the Massage first.