Since its first appearance in 1962, the impact of The Gutenberg Galaxy has been felt around the world. It gave us the concept of the global village; that phrase has now been translated, along with the rest of the book, into twelve languages, from Japanese to Serbo-Croat. It helped establish Marshall McLuhan as the original 'media guru.' More than 200,000 copies are in print. The reissue of this landmark book reflects the continuing importance of McLuhan's work for contemporary readers.
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
There is a newer edition of this item:
|
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
From Amazon
Movable type, as much if not more than any meaningful arrangement of that type, transformed Renaissance consciousness--just as electronic circuitry is transforming us now. That is the basic premise of Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy. New technologies create new human environments, and "technological environments are not merely passive containers … but are active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike." McLuhan's second book, The Gutenberg Galaxy was published in 1962, won the Canadian Governor General's Medal that same year, and pushed McLuhan toward international prominence. Like most of McLuhans's other work--Understanding Media or The Global Village, for example--The Gutenberg Galaxy is a rich, dense text that draws freely, almost frantically, from works of philosophy, economics, political theory, history, and especially literature. There are liberal doses of Shakespeare--text and commentary--sprinkled throughout, as well as trenchant appropriations from Rabelais, Cervantes, Leibnitz, Blake, Joyce, and many others. Attempting to match his medium to his metaphors, McLuhan structures his book using what he calls "a mosaic or field approach" and ends up producing more than 100 short sections separated by pithy glosses in large bold type, such as "Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy," or " Nobody ever made a grammatical error in a non-literate society." Today's reader might find the "mosaic of perpetually interacting forms" into which the author organizes his data and quotations distinctly Web-like. Indeed, one could say of McLuhan and his complex rhetorical circuitry what McLuhan himself says about Shakespeare: "His insights appear so richly in his lines that it is very difficult to select among them." --Russell Prather
Review
'One of the most stimulating and important books that has been written in our time.'
(Saturday Night)'Endlessly stimulating, informative, and liberating.'
(The Observer Weekend Review)
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
McLuhan's most enduring work and certainly his most accessible. A history of western society from a media perspective. McLuhan concentrates on the larger patterns in history by providing a snapshot of each period with a rich bibliography to fill in the details. A mosaic of the works of other writers arranged to get at more abstract ideas. The book is filled with great understanding and insight, often packaged as gnomic utterances but rarely without substantial scholarly support behind them. He stole from the best and without shame and put ideas together like no one else. Not so much an original thinker (for which we can be grateful given some of his crackpot ideas) but a chemist experimenting with the works of others to great effect. Misunderstood and disliked in his own time, idolized in the present for all the wrong reasons. We will not see his like again.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One can almost think of "The Gutenberg Galaxy" as the "prequel" to Marshall McLuhan's much better known "Understanding Media," because "Galaxy" does for print techology what "Media" does for electronic technology. Basically McLuhan assesses how European civilization went from an ear-touch (listening) oriented mode of receving information to an eye-oriented (that is, reading) mode of receiving information. Recalling that for McLuhan, the medium IS the message, so the invention and dissemination of printing-press technology and the sharp rise in literacy it occasioned therefore brought about a major seismic shift in Western thought and all that goes with it--language, mores, dress, politics, etc.
Another way of looking at this is to say that in McLuhan's view, history is not determined by politics or economics or weather or science per se so much as by our media--the "extensions of man." This book is a must-read followup to anyone who liked "Understanding Media"; it's also a great book to cut one's teeth on before reading "Understanding Media" because it's a more traditional (i.e., formal and linear) type of academic work. And undeniably brilliant. For what it's worth, I was a communications major at the University of Virginia in the mid-1970s when reading McLuhan's work was rougher than it is now; many of his concepts like "global village" have since filtered thru society. But I read all of McLuhan's media-oriented writings, wrote term papers on him, and feel as though I benefited as a result--he's the main reason I'm a writer today.
Allen; charless@ync.net
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book will alter your perception of reality. It will cause you reflect on your environment, the definition of which will have expanded because of this book. In addition you will be introduced to authors and concepts from an eclectic range of disciplines, all juxtaposed to create insight (my clue in) into McLuhan's ideas. I read this one first, and I've continued on since then. His insights have practical application on how to surf in today's rapidly changing whorl-pool world.
McLuhan makes his case that: technology shapes our experience, and that to be unaware of technology's pervasive influence is to succumb to "robo-centrism." His insightful analysis of the effects of technology leads him to focus on the causes, believing that awareness of the causes can modify the effects. "The theme of this book is not that there is anything good or bad about print but that unconsciousness of the effect of any force is a disaster, especially a force we have made ourselves." And so, "Some may feel that life is too valuable and delightful a thing to be spent in such arbitrary and involuntary automatism."
Want to see more reviews on this item?
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 16 reviews
4.9 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Gutenberg Galaxy
What can be said about this book without going into a full critical review? It's a an important read, that can only become more so as time passes and generations of people become... Read more
Published 4 months ago by glen cochrane
5.0 out of 5 stars
A intriguing perspective on how printed media has alter us.
The Gutenberg Galaxy is an intriguing account of the drastic alterations and implications of the transiton from the audile-tactile culture to the visual stressed culture of the... Read more
Published on July 31 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
A intriguing perspective on how printed media has alter us.
The Gutenberg Galaxy is an intriguing account of the drastic alterations and implications or the transiton from the audile-tactile culture to the visual stressed culture of the... Read more
Published on July 31 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best of McLuhan's Writing
The best of McLuhan's media analyses and published before his 60's stardom. Written in his "mosaic style" (would be easily adapted to hypertext) it remains an excellent... Read more
Published on Dec 22 1998
5.0 out of 5 stars
The unknown classic
What makes this book, like almost all others of McLuhan, is that an extreme amount of background is NOT necessary to draw from McLuhan's insightful observations. Read more
Published on Sep 14 1998 by Dulouz@aol.com
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Business & Investing
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Communication & Journalism > Media Studies
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Social Sciences
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Media Studies
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Popular Culture
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Sociology
- Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Industrial, Manufacturing & Operational Systems > Manufacturing
- Books > Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 > Engineering
- Books > Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 > Humanities
- Books > Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 > Science
- Books > Science & Math > History & Philosophy > History of Technology
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
