The medium is the massage - must read for anyone in tech, communication, music/art, internetmarketing
Just a recommendation for "The Medium is the Massage" by Marshall McLuhan. I just finished reading it for the 5th time today. I come back to it every six months or so. This mofo McLuhan predicted the internet as it is today 30 years before it was invented and is the dude who coined "Global Village." You could wade through essay after essay of dull nonfiction or read through The Medium is the Massage. You have to get the physical book to get the full effect, he made it so he could present his hard to understand theories in a easy to read marketable way. Its a fun read, you can blast through it in an afternoon.
It goes over how all media is just an extension of humans senses, mind and bodies, and how the media of our day shapes us and the culture around us. This is super important to see how history has changed humans due to technology AND understand future trends in music, business, technology, art, economy as they are changing due to the invention of the internet and the dawning of our digital age.
Mind blowing book. Every time I read it I catch something different. Today I went over one of the pages that shows how we tend to keep the form of the past onto the medium of the future. An example in the book is how roman columns used to have function but even current century architects still use their form despite having no function or need. Application I applied it to was digital music. Virtual instruments used to make electronic music have been around for a while now but only recently in the past few years have people been making virtual instruments that strive away from the "form" of past instruments, many of the virtual instruments still had piano keys and strings of guitars despite having no need for them. Only in the past few years have people been making digital instruments leaving the physical limitations of physical instruments.
You'll get goosebumps when you read how this guy predicted changes in the world and everything in it due the the advancement of electronics and the invention of the internet. Dude was way ahead of his time
Cool thx for the recommendation. What'd you learn from it?
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That thing about virtual instruments sounds super interesting, will give it a read
Yeah its tough to explain the value in this book.. Many people found his earlier prose books esoteric and hard to understand so he created this book filled with metaphors and pictures to get his points across. Insofacto the book itself is a point in itself. That being that the medium of communication has far greater impact and importance than the content or "message" that the medium carries. So from changing the medium of his book - from a long non-fiction prose read, to a book filled with pictures and metaphors, historic and modern pictures in juxtapose to deliver his "message" he effectively changed the way the reader will understand and absorb his information.
This has great implications for our digital age. I'd be realllyy interested in hearing some of your guys thoughts on the book applied to pickup, music, art, the internet and how things like reddit, youtube, facebook are changing the way humans interact with one another, how culture is changing, how the way we think and do things is changing.
Why is this understanding of "the medium is the message" particularly useful? We tend to notice changes - even slight changes (that unfortunately we often tend to discount in significance.) "The medium is the message" tells us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium. With this early warning, we can set out to characterize and identify the new medium before it becomes obvious to everyone - a process that often takes years or even decades. And if we discover that the new medium brings along effects that might be detrimental to our society or culture, we have the opportunity to influence the development and evolution of the new innovation before the effects becomes pervasive. As McLuhan reminds us, "Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force." (McLuhan 199)
If you can understand how the invention of printed type affected the way the world works (not what was printed.. that is the "message" but the medium of the printing machine) or how even the lightbulb allowed humans to help break the bounds of darkness then you can understand what the internet is doing and will do to our "global village"