The Medium is the Massage
Marshall Mchluhan
& Quentin Fiore
The Medium is the Massage certainly keeps you on your toes. Every page has a different layout, some with the word right side up, some upside down, some you can only read in a mirror. In addition to being an interesting read physically the contents also make you question everything you used to think about seeing.
It is written "a world of total involvement in which everybody is so profoundly involved with everybody else and in which nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be anymore." This grows truer with every generation. Technology has created a situation in which everyone is connected to everyone else. Which is amazing in almost all situations but I think the level of social justice that goes on and the level of deviance grows. with the internet it is always possible to find a group of people that agree with you and therefore reinforce your thinking.
The Medium is the Massage even talks about the same ideas as the Railway Journey"The railway radically altered the personal outlooks and patterns of social interdependence. it bred and nurtured the American Dream." In essence this book is about seeing things in a different like, just as many of the books if not all the books we've read have been.
Another anecdote I found interesting is the discussion of the south artist. "The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well adjusted,"he cannot go along with currents..." I found this amusing. often i have found myself over the corse of this semester contemplating the ideal of the genius artist. This man who is found at a young age scribbling in the margins of his notebook. A mad recluse who refuses to follow the trends of the time. I understand where this comes from. And it makes sense that society follows this idea. We value "genius" above all else. Just seems a bit idealistic and silly to me.
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