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)
Gary Krug: Communication, Technology and Cultural Change (2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · communication technology, culture, history of technology, technology
Communication and the history of technology have invariably been examined in terms of artefacts and people.
Gary Krug argues that communication technology must be studied as an integral part of culture and lived-experience.
Rather than stand in awe of the apparent explosion of new technologies, this book links key moments and developments in communication technology with the social conditions of their time. It traces the evolution of technology, culture, and the self as mutually dependent and influential.
This innovative approach will be welcomed by undergraduates and postgraduates needing to develop their understanding of the cultural effects of communication technology, and the history of key communication systems and techniques.
Keywords and phrases
mass media, memex, pornography, However, antinomianism, Plato, camera obscura, USA PATRIOT Act, calotype, internet addictive disorder, Vannevar Bush, Paul Virilio, Nerone, gnostic, Eric Voegelin, daguerreotype, pentimento, Total Information Awareness, BBFC, personal computer
Publisher SAGE, 2005
ISBN 0761972013, 9780761972013
241 pages
PDF (updated on 2013-6-5)
Comments (2)Alex Roland, Philip Shiman: Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983-1993 (2002)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1980s, arpanet, artificial intelligence, computing, expert systems, history of computing, history of technology, technology
“This is the story of an extraordinary effort by the U.S. Department of Defense to hasten the advent of “machines that think.” From 1983 to 1993, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent an extra $1 billion on computer research aimed at achieving artificial intelligence. The Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI) was conceived as an integrated plan to promote computer chip design and manufacture, computer architecture, and artificial intelligence software. What distinguished SCI from other large-scale technology programs was that it self-consciously set out to advance an entire research front. The SCI succeeded in fostering significant technological successes, even though it never achieved machine intelligence. The goal provided a powerful organizing principle for a suite of related research programs, but it did not solve the problem of coordinating these programs. In retrospect, it is hard to see how it could have.
In Strategic Computing, Alex Roland and Philip Shiman uncover the roles played in the SCI by technology, individuals, and social and political forces. They explore DARPA culture, especially the information processing culture within the agency, and they evaluate the SCI’s accomplishments and set them in the context of overall computer development during this period. Their book is an important contribution to our understanding of the complex sources of contemporary computing.”
Keywords and phrases
DARPA, expert systems, Teknowledge, Connection Machine, Shiman, Robert Kahn, supercomputers, ARPA, IntelliCorp, Artificial Intelligence, Lynn Conway, VLSI, ARPANET, Alex Roland, U.S. Congress, Saul Amarel, CPSR, George Heilmeier, Xerox PARC, Craig Fields
Publisher MIT Press, 2002
ISBN 0262182262, 9780262182263
427 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-25)
Comment (1)