Marshall McLuhan and Virtuality

Description

In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan was promoted as the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin and Einstein. Yet when he died in 1980, his explorations of media were perceived as irrelevant and naive. In recent years, however, McLuhanism has been resurrected. Why? This book argues that radical transformations in media and technology have reinvigorated debate about McLuhan's famous dictum, 'the medium is the message'. Today, his views on 'the global village' and 'hot and cool media' have been drawn into discourses on the sensory, psychological and social impact of virtual reality and cyberspace. Marshall McLuhan and Virtuality examines McLuhan's thought in relation to the information revolution, assessing his 'probes' into aural and visual culture and their problematic relation to the global and corporate matrix of the Web and Internet. It also discusses his claims in relation to postmodern theory and considers how McLuhan's renaissance connects with the posthuman 'cyberbole' of disembodiment and virtual identity.