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)
David A. Mindell: Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics (2002)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, cybernetics, engineering, history of computing, history of technology, industry, information theory, machine, military, networks, noise, science, technology, telephone
Today, we associate the relationship between feedback, control, and computing with Norbert Wiener’s 1948 formulation of cybernetics. But the theoretical and practical foundations for cybernetics, control engineering, and digital computing were laid earlier, between the two world wars. In Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics, David A. Mindell shows how the modern sciences of systems emerged from disparate engineering cultures and their convergence during World War II.
Mindell examines four different arenas of control systems research in the United States between the world wars: naval fire control, the Sperry Gyroscope Company, the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and Vannevar Bush’s laboratory at MIT. Each of these institutional sites had unique technical problems, organizational imperatives, and working environments, and each fostered a distinct engineering culture. Each also developed technologies to represent the world in a machine.
At the beginning of World War II, President Roosevelt established the National Defense Research Committee, one division of which was devoted to control systems. Mindell shows how the NDRC brought together representatives from the four pre-war engineering cultures, and how its projects synthesized conceptions of control, communications, and computing. By the time Wiener articulated his vision, these ideas were already suffusing through engineering. They would profoundly influence the digital world.
As a new way to conceptualize the history of computing, this book will be of great interest to historians of science, technology, and culture, as well as computer scientists and theorists.
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002
ISBN 0801868955, 9780801868955
439 pages
Mindell’s lecture about the book at MIT (video, 78 min, 2002)
Review (Larry Owens, History of Science and Technology)
Download (removed on 2014-9-18 upon request of the author)
Comment (1)Laszlo Solymar: Getting the Message: A History of Communications (1999)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of communications, history of technology, media history, technology, telegraph, telegraphy, telephone
The past century has seen developments in communications technology that rival those in any other field of human activity. Significant advances are made every year, and the impact on our day-to-day lives has been tremendous. Getting the message explores the fascinating history of communications, starting with ancient civilizations, the Greeks and Romans, then leading through the development of the electric telegraph, and up to the present day with e-mail and cellular phones. In clear, non-technical language the book explains the details of each new development while interweaving ideas from politics, economics, and cultural history. The book concludes with a look at the possible future developments and how they may further transform how we live. Lavishly illustrated and including many original illustrations, the book is an informative and highly entertaining guide to this lively field.
Published by Oxford University Press, 1999
ISBN 0198503334, 9780198503330
311 pages
Key terms: optical fibres, waveguide, carrier wave, AT&T, field effect transistor, integrated circuits, Morse Code, capacitor, Minitel, Second Industrial Revolution, personal computers, electromagnetic waves, p-n junction, Bell Laboratories, Robert Noyce, Poldhu, Claude Chappe, pulse code modulation, teleprinter, semaphore
Comment (0)