Status
Available
Call number
Publication
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division (1962), Edition: 1, Paperback, 294 pages
Description
The Gutenberg Galaxy catapulted Marshall McLuhan to fame as a media theorist and, in time, a new media prognosticator. Fifty years after its initial publication, this landmark text is more significant than ever before. Readers will be amazed by McLuhan's prescience, unmatched by anyone since, predicting as he did the dramatic technological innovations that have fundamentally changed how we communicate. The Gutenberg Galaxy foresaw the networked, compressed 'global village' that would emerge in the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries -- despite having been written when black-and-white television was ubiquitous. This new edition of The Gutenberg Galaxy celebrates both the centennial of McLuhan's birth and the fifty-year anniversary of the book's publication. A new interior design updates The Gutenberg Galaxy for twenty-first-century readers, while honouring the innovative, avant-garde spirit of the original. This edition also includes new introductory essays that illuminate McLuhan's lasting effect on a variety of scholarly fields and popular culture. A must-read for those who inhabit today's global village, The Gutenberg Galaxy is an indispensable road map for our evolving communication landscape.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member NoirLibrarian
Over the years I have come to appreciate the often criticized McLuhan, and "The Gutenberg Galaxy" is my favorite of his books. Its theme is how Western civilization was changed by adopting first the phonetic alphabet, and later the printing press. McLuhan thought that these inventions created a
McLuhan taught English at the University of Wisconsin, St. Louis University, and the University of Toronto, where he was also the founder and director of the Center for Culture and Technology.
McLuhan points out that during the manuscript phase of book production reading was always done aloud and to an audience. Literature was not so much literary as rhetorical, and the rules of rhetoric governed its composition. When society was primarily oral, words were seen as sacred, and their hearing was often compared with digestion. Words were poetic, and point of view shifted erratically by our standards. The concept of authorship was unknown before printing.
Printing brought silent reading and authorship, but also led to what McLuhan called the “homogenization of space,” the segmentation of actions and functions, and a rise in technology or “applied knowledge.” Art and science split apart. Holism fractured and science became entranced with the shards. What had been a cohesive society new became a collection of individuals formed into nation-states. “Print is the technology of individualism,” McLuhan says.
McLuhan was fascinated by media and its effects, and his thinking strayed into the effects of other media besides print. In one section of the book, McLuhan demonstrates that the grammar of film— cutaways, closeups, pan shots, etc.—is not easily understood or transparent, but must be learned if the film is to be understood as the creator wishes. Tribal Africans viewing a training film about sanitation missed the film's message but saw a chicken passing in the periphery through a frame. Also, the African audience was confused and chagrined to see a person disappear off the edge of the screen; the film later had to be re-edited to portray the person’s disappearing around a corner, rendering it acceptable for this oral-tactile audience.
McLuhan made a career by saying the opposite of what library technophiles say they believe: only information matters, not the “container” in which it resides, be it book, video, text-on-screen, etc. McLuhan's central message is that the container *is* the message, irrespective of the information “within”; our predominant form of media will determine how we see the world.
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visual bias in the way we see the world, altered the “ratio among our senses,” and changed the trajectory of our culture. In moving from oral language or pictographs to the elastic, abstract medium of the phonetic alphabet, Western man moved from a tribal world—a tactile world of simultaneity, inclusiveness, personal significance, social integration, and magic to a schizophrenic visual world of point of view, chronology, individualism, linear perspective, abstraction, science, nationalism, and militarism. “When the meaningless sign linked to the meaningless sound we have built the shape and meaning of Western man,” McLuhan says. (p. 50) McLuhan taught English at the University of Wisconsin, St. Louis University, and the University of Toronto, where he was also the founder and director of the Center for Culture and Technology.
McLuhan points out that during the manuscript phase of book production reading was always done aloud and to an audience. Literature was not so much literary as rhetorical, and the rules of rhetoric governed its composition. When society was primarily oral, words were seen as sacred, and their hearing was often compared with digestion. Words were poetic, and point of view shifted erratically by our standards. The concept of authorship was unknown before printing.
Printing brought silent reading and authorship, but also led to what McLuhan called the “homogenization of space,” the segmentation of actions and functions, and a rise in technology or “applied knowledge.” Art and science split apart. Holism fractured and science became entranced with the shards. What had been a cohesive society new became a collection of individuals formed into nation-states. “Print is the technology of individualism,” McLuhan says.
McLuhan was fascinated by media and its effects, and his thinking strayed into the effects of other media besides print. In one section of the book, McLuhan demonstrates that the grammar of film— cutaways, closeups, pan shots, etc.—is not easily understood or transparent, but must be learned if the film is to be understood as the creator wishes. Tribal Africans viewing a training film about sanitation missed the film's message but saw a chicken passing in the periphery through a frame. Also, the African audience was confused and chagrined to see a person disappear off the edge of the screen; the film later had to be re-edited to portray the person’s disappearing around a corner, rendering it acceptable for this oral-tactile audience.
McLuhan made a career by saying the opposite of what library technophiles say they believe: only information matters, not the “container” in which it resides, be it book, video, text-on-screen, etc. McLuhan's central message is that the container *is* the message, irrespective of the information “within”; our predominant form of media will determine how we see the world.
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LibraryThing member breadhat
This was a fun and inspiring book, and there were points at which I would have considered just giving it five stars despite some of its obvious flaws and the fact that it is quite dated. I really like the way that McLuhan constructs his narrative by quoting other writers and commenting on the
The main point of irritation for me is how McLuhan's interpretations of texts could be so loose and, honestly, lazy. Some reviewers have made mention of the dreadful King Lear episode at the beginning, but he does that to some degree all the way through, especially with Shakespeare. I'm not arguing for sticking to authorial intention, but good literary critics can sell the reader on some of the outrageous interpretations that they produce. McLuhan doesn't seem to be even trying sometimes: he just comes up with his argument in advance, looks around for a text to back it up, and doesn't bother being very selective. That was how it came across to me, at least. For someone with close ties to the discipline of literary criticism, he seems to have an especially hard time with it.
Overall, I loved the book and am now equipped with a list of other authors to check out. McLuhan is fun and has a distinctive way of writing theory that I wish more people had copied.
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quoted material. I found this to be wonderfully transparent and to give a sense of the relative weight of each author in relation to McLuhan's thought. It sometimes felt like I was reading the most enjoyable annotated bibliography ever, or a medieval text with glosses and super-glosses.The main point of irritation for me is how McLuhan's interpretations of texts could be so loose and, honestly, lazy. Some reviewers have made mention of the dreadful King Lear episode at the beginning, but he does that to some degree all the way through, especially with Shakespeare. I'm not arguing for sticking to authorial intention, but good literary critics can sell the reader on some of the outrageous interpretations that they produce. McLuhan doesn't seem to be even trying sometimes: he just comes up with his argument in advance, looks around for a text to back it up, and doesn't bother being very selective. That was how it came across to me, at least. For someone with close ties to the discipline of literary criticism, he seems to have an especially hard time with it.
Overall, I loved the book and am now equipped with a list of other authors to check out. McLuhan is fun and has a distinctive way of writing theory that I wish more people had copied.
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LibraryThing member robertg69
difficult read
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
Marshall McLuhan liked to play with words. He liked to get his information from a printed page. One with uniform letters, uniformly shaped, precise in its presentation, and precise in its information, presenting a large or small part of a world that was perceived as rational. He believed that the
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way in which information was presented to us was crucial in how our minds would receive, retain and build on the information received. He believed as well, that information presented in an alphabetic format was different than that presented in a hieroglyphic or digital format. This is his presentation of that point of view. it has not been outdone. Read the book, and do not read it on an electronic, E-book format. That would defeat the purpose of his work. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Original publication date
1962
Physical description
294 p.; 9 inches
ISBN
9780802060419