Marshall McLuhan: Counterblast (1954–) [English, Spanish]

“In 1969 Marshall McLuhan observed that “today we live invested with an electric information environment that is quite as imperceptible to us as water is to a fish.” He was convinced that the new electronic media shape not only the information they convey but also our very consciousness and that in order to actually perceive this a counter environment is needed.

To demonstrate his point McLuhan wrote Counterblast. More a manifesto than a book, Counterblast is a typographically explosive compilation of short essays and probes (complex ideas compressed into a few thought-provoking words), all of which focus on the effects of media on the human condition. It could be seen as a compilation of bold headlines and it is hauntingly prescient, as this superbly reproduced facsimile of the original edition will affirm.

In true McLuhan style the title ‘COUNTERBLAST’ is a play on the word ‘BLAST,’ the name given to a magazine designed by Wyndham Lewis in 1914 and the first publication ever to be set in heavy headline type, albeit in the face of enormous resistance from the London printing establishment who considered it anti-literary. McLuhan never wanted Counterblast to be perceived as literature, but rather a series of headlines as icons.”

This special edition was published on the occasion of transmediale.11 Response:ability festival, Berlin, 2011.

Foreword by W. Terrence Gordon
Afterward by Elena Lamberti
Publisher Transmediale, festival for art and digital culture, Berlin, in cooperation with Gingko Press
ISBN 9781584234562

Elena Lamberti about McLuhan (video)

publisher
publisher of the previous edition

Counterblast (English, 1954/2011 edition)
Counterblast (English, 1970 edition, via aphasic-letters.com)
Contraexplosión (Spanish, trans. Isidoro Gelstein, 1971, no OCR, added on 2013-11-22)