Understanding Media

This reissue of “Understanding Media” marks the 30th anniversary (1964-1994) of Marshall McLuhan’s classic expose on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media. Terms and phrases such as “the global village” and “the medium is the message” are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan’s theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate. There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan’s work in the last few years, fuelled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as “Wired”, and the develoment of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT’s Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined.