Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964–) [EN, SC, CZ, DE, CR]

“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

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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)

Michele White: The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship (2006)

Internet and computer users are often represented onscreen as active and empowered—as in AOL’s striding yellow figure and the interface hand that appears to manipulate software and hypertext links. In The Body and the Screen Michele White suggests that users can more properly be understood as spectators rendered and regulated by technologies and representations, for whom looking and the mediation of the screen are significant aspects of engagement. Drawing on apparatus and feminist psychoanalytic film theories, art history, gender studies, queer theory, critical race and postcolonial studies, and other theories of cultural production, White conceptualizes Internet and computer spectatorship and provides theoretical models that can be employed in other analyses. She offers case studies and close visual and textual analysis of the construction of spectatorship in different settings.

White shows that despite the onscreen promise of empowerment and coherence (through depictions of materiality that structure the experience), fragmentation and confusion are constant aspects of Internet spectatorship. She analyzes spectatorship in multi-user object-oriented settings (MOOs) by examining the textual process of looking and gazing, contrasts the experiences of the women’s webcam spectator and operator, describes intentional technological failures in net art, and considers ways in which traditional conceptions of artistry, authorship, and production techniques persist in Internet and computer settings (as seen in the creation of virtual environment avatars and in digital imaging art). Finally, she analyzes the physical and psychic pain described by male programmers in Internet forums as another counternarrative to the common tale of the empowered user. Spectatorship, White argues, not only affects the way specific interfaces are understood but also helps shape larger conceptions of self and society.

Published by MIT Press, 2006
ISBN 0262232499, 9780262232494
307 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-9-3)

New Media: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. (2003/2008)

“New Media: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive introduction to the culture, history, technologies and theories of new media. Written especially for students, the book considers the ways in which ‘new media’ really are new, assesses the claims that a media and technological revolution has taken place and formulates new ways for media studies to respond to new technologies.

The authors introduce a wide variety of topics including: how to define the characteristics of new media; social and political uses of new media and new communications; new media technologies, politics and globalization; everyday life and new media; theories of interactivity, simulation, the new media economy; cybernetics, cyberculture, the history of automata and artificial life.

Substantially updated from the first edition to cover recent theoretical developments, approaches and significant technological developments, this is the best and by far the most comprehensive textbook available on this exciting and expanding subject.

At www.newmediaintro.com you will find:
* additional international case studies with online references
* specially created You Tube videos on machines and digital photography
* a new ‘Virtual Camera’ case study, with links to short film examples
* useful links to related websites, resources and research sites
* further online reading links to specific arguments or discussion topics in the book
* links to key scholars in the field of new media”

By Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly
Publisher Routledge
ISBN 0415431611, 9780415431613
464 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-12-14)