Item #39112 The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Marshall McLUHAN, Quentin FIORE.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.

11.

The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.

NY: Bantam Books, 1967. First edition, mass-market p/b issue. 160pp. Illustrated throughout (including Steve Schapiro's double-page shot of The Velvet Underground/Exploding Plastic Inevitable in performance).

A landmark in book design that gives visual expression to McLuhan's idea that technologies are the messages, not the content of the communication, and that computers constitute an extension of the human nervous system. The book's title uses the term 'massage' in a revision of his famous dictum "the medium is the message", and in it McLuhan argues that while the individual may feel soothed or relaxed (massaged) by modern media, the impact of new technologies may also induce anxiety: "All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences, they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical." (p.26).

The book was initiated by designer Quentin Fiore and co-ordinated by his friend, Jerome Agel, who acted as a link between Fiore and McLuhan and helped arrange its publication. Fiore's experimental design attempted to show (rather than simply tell) McLuhan's argument by radically re-imagining the conventional paperback format in such a way that it visually represented how mediated information and the digital age was reshaping society. Its initial print run of 35,000 was quickly followed by further printings and an eventual worldwide circulation of around one million copies, making it both a countercultural classic and a bestseller.

A tight, Near Fine, unread copy.

Sold