The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects

More than 40 years after its initial publication in 1967, this piquant classic is being released once again in its original hardcover format in celebration of the McLuhan Centenary. The Medium is the Massage remains Marshall McLuhan's most popular book, perhaps as influential as Understanding Media. With every technological and social "advance", McLuhan's theories reveal how prescient his insights actually proved to be. McLuhan's proclamation that "the media work us over completely" becomes more evident every day. In his words, "so pervasive are they in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, or unaltered". McLuhan's remarkable observation that "societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication" is undoubtedly more relevant today than ever before.