Keith Hart: Memory Bank. Money in an Unequal World (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · capitalism, culture, economy, internet, money

Hart believes that humanity stands on the threshold of a new era in which there will be a pressing need to develop, conceptually and in practice, an awareness of the common problems facing world society as a whole. We have scarcely begun to contemplate how to establish and maintain the social, technological and cultural infrastructures we will need to survive in the 21st century. In a polarized world characterized by staggering economic inequalities, recent advances in technology offer radical possibilities for the development of human freedom and equality. Hart’s particular focus in this book is the Internet, which he argues holds the potential for a re-personalization of economic relations. In this world, new means of exchange could be harnessed to the ends of a truer economic democracy. Money is the problem, but it is also the solution. Hart, an anthropologist by training, offers a new view on the interaction between money, capitalism, and culture – now, in the future, and throughout history. The many important strands of thought and experience in this book will challenge established views from all quarters of economic, political, and social thought.
Publisher Texere, 2001
ISBN 1587990970, 9781587990977
Length 320 pages
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Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964–) [EN, SC, CZ, DE, CR]
Filed under book | Tags: · advertising, film, global village, history of technology, mass media, media technology, media theory, money, new media, phonograph, photography, print, radio, technology, telegraphy, telephone, television

“When first published, Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century. In Terrence Gordon’s own words, “McLuhan is in full flight already in the introduction, challenging us to plunge with him into what he calls ‘the creative process of knowing.'” Much to the chagrin of his contemporary critics McLuhan’s preference was for a prose style that explored rather than explained. Probes, or aphorisms, were an indispensable tool with which he sought to prompt and prod the reader into an “understanding of how media operates” and to provoke reflection.
In the 1960s McLuhan’s theories aroused both wrath and admiration. It is intriguing to speculate what he might have to say 40 years later on subjects to which he devoted whole chapters such as Television, The Telephone, Weapons, Housing and Money. Today few would dispute that mass media have indeed decentralized modern living and turned the world into a global village.”
First published in 1964
With a new introduction by Lewis H. Lapham
Publisher The MIT Press, 1994
ISBN: 0262631598, 9780262631594
392 pages
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (English, 1964/1994, updated on 2019-2-27)
Poznavanje opštila: čovekovih produžetaka (Serbo-Croatian, trans. Slobodan Đorđević, 1971, added on 2015-12-21)
Jak rozumět médiím: Extenze člověka (Czech, trans. Miloš Calda, 1991, added on 2014-3-13)
Die magischen Kanäle: Understanding Media (German, trans. Meinrad Amann, 1992, added on 2013-11-22)
Razumijevanje medija (Croatian, trans. David Prpa, 2008, added on 2013-11-22)