Raymond Williams: Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974–)

“Twenty-first century TV offers an apparently endless stream of images, unfolding at high speed. We no longer watch individual programs but flick from channel to channel, absorbing a continuous flow of news, game shows, comedy, drama, movies, advertising and trailers. Television: Technology and Cultural Form was first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules. Yet Williams’ analysis of television’s history, its institutions, programs and practices, and its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient. TV offers an apparently endless engagement with a flood of Williams stresses the importance of technology in shaping the cultural form of television, while always resisting the determinism of Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that “the medium is the message”. If the medium really is the message, Williams asks, what is left for us to do or say? Williams argues that, on the contrary, we as viewers have the power to disturb, disrupt and to distract the otherwise cold logic of history and technology – not just because television is part of the fabric of our daily lives, but because new technologies continue to offer opportunities, momentarily outside the sway of transnational corporations or the grasp of media moguls, for new forms of self and political expression.”

First published by Fontana, London, 1974

Edited by Ederyn Williams
With a New Preface by Roger Silverstone
Publisher Routledge, 2003
ISBN 0415314569, 9780415314565
xvii+172 pages

Keywords and phrases
KQED, Fihn, Anacin, telegraphy, technological determinism, satellite television, Britain, Tony Hancock, Sesame Street, cable television, music-hall, Cathy Come Home, Masterpiece Theatre, analysis of flow, five channels, dumbshow, privatised, Golden Gate Bridge, Lord Lambton

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2015-7-10)

Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore: The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967–) [EN, ES, PT]

“Marshall McLuhan is the man who predicted the all­-pervasive rise of the modern mass media. Blending text, image and photography, his 1960s classic The Medium is the Massage illustrates how the growth of tech no logy utterly reshapes society, personal lives and sensory perceptions, so that we are effectively shaped by the means we use to communicate. This concept, and his ideas such as rolling, up-to-the-minute news broadcasts and the media ‘global village’, have proved decades ahead of their time.” (from the back cover)

Originally published in 1967 by Bantam Books
Produced by Jerome Agel
Publisher Penguin, 2008
ISBN 9780141035826
159 pages

Wikipedia

The Medium is the Massage (English, 1967/2008, 10 MB, updated on 2017-4-24)
El medio es el masaje (Spanish, trans. León Mirlas, 1969, 10 MB, added on 2015-1-8)
O meio são as massa-gens (Portuguese, trans. Ivan Pedro de Martins, 1969, 16 MB, added on 2015-1-8)