In 1969 Marshall McLuhan observed that "today we live invested with an electric information environment that is quite as imperceptible to us as water is to a fish." He was convinced that the new electronic media shape not only the information they convey but also our very consciousness and that in order to actually perceive this a counter environment is needed. To demonstrate his point McLuhan wrote Counterblast. More a manifesto than a book, Counterblast is a typographically explosive compilation of short essays and probes (complex ideas compressed into a few thought-provoking words), all of which focus on the effects of media on the human condition. It could be seen as a compilation of bold headlines and it is hauntingly prescient, as this superbly reproduced facsimile of the original edition will affirm. In true McLuhan style that title 'Counterblast' is a play on the word 'Blast', the name given to a magazine designed by Wyndham Lewis in 1914 and the first publication ever to be set in heavy headline type, albeit in the face of enormous resistance from the London printing establishment who considered it anti-literary.


www.goodreads.com/author/show/455.Marshall_McLuhan

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

Read Jonathan Miller's critique of McLuhan - devastatingly apposite.

Polymath media-luvvie Doc Miller's 1971 piece is far from the last word on weatherman/visionary McLuhan.

Far more importantly, where is comfy-zone, decades decaying Miller's much needed savage critique of today's bent-mainstream media warping minds-wrecking lives ?

Which other visionaries from 18th century Edmund Burke to 19th century Oscar Wilde, plus a few more besides McLuhan also predicted ?


masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/mcluhan.html

www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/ram0202.html

thisrecording.com/today/2011/10/27/in-wh...ing-of-his-work.html

www.wordyard.com/mcluhan-biography/

PLEASE write normally Prop; fewer adjectives, fewer capital letters in the middle of words, fewer obscure statements... write like a normal person because we simply cannot carry posts that give us headaches.

oh JK..you would need to define 'normal' first !!!

Marshal McLuhan was indeed touched with vision and is largely forgotten today.
Thanks for the reminder.

Sorry JK, thanx Hed-Hopper Anonymous !

Our posts are meant as short morse-code/sub-Hedda type bursts from the front, side or rear ?

Hopper & McLuhan Rock !

LoL.