Title: The Medium is the Massage
Subtitle: An Inventory of Effects
Editors: Quentin Fiore and Marshall McLuhan (with Jerome Agel)
Publisher: Bantam | Random House, New York
Format: 160 pages, 17.9 x 10.8 x 1.2 cm
ISBN: 978-1-5842-3070-0 (actual version)
In 1967 McLuhan published The Medium is the Massage, a short volume which distilled many of his key ideas into aphorisms and brief paragraphs. Designed by Quentin Fiore, the typography, layout and accompanying images wittily illustrate the content, making this McLuhan’s most accessible text. A year after its publication in book form, an audio version was released. The recording combines selections from the text, read by McLuhan, Fiore, Agel, and others, with an eclectic mix of musical samples and accompaniment.
From Wikipedia:
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects is a book co-created by media analyst Marshall McLuhan and graphic designer Quentin Fiore, and coordinated by Jerome Agel. It was published by Bantam books in 1967 and became a bestseller and a cult classic. The book itself is 160 pages in length and composed in an experimental, collage style with text superimposed on visual elements and vice versa. Some pages are printed backwards and are meant to be read in a mirror (see mirror writing). Some are intentionally left blank. Most contain photographs and images both modern and historic, juxtaposed in startling ways.
The book’s title is actually a mistake according to McLuhan’s son, Eric. The actual title was The Medium is the Message but it came back from the printer with the first “e” in message misprinted as an “a”. McLuhan is said to have thought the mistake to be supportive of the point he was trying to make in the book and decided to leave it be. Later readings have interpreted the word in the title as a pun meaning alternately “massage, “message,” and “mass age”. Its message, broadly speaking, is that historical changes in communications and craft media change human consciousness, and that modern electronics are bringing humanity full circle to an industrial analogue of tribal mentality, what he termed “the global village”. By erasing borders and dissolving information boundaries, electronic telecommunications are fated to render traditional social structures like the Nation state and the University irrelevant. Prejudice and oppression are also doomed by the unstoppable pressure of instant, global communication.