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Hailed by Tom Wolfe as "the most important
thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Pavlov,"
sixties media theorist Marshall McLuhan was the first person
to grasp the full and radical implications of mass media
for contemporary life. His trenchant and remarkably prescient
account of how this technology was changing -- and would
continue to change -- our world briefly made him one of
the most celebrated minds. Catapulted into the spotlight
after the publication of his Understanding Media,
McLuhan captured the world's attention with such epoch-seizing
aphorisms as "the medium is the message," and
" the global village." But his fame peaked by
the mid-seventies, and when he died in 1980, his Centre
for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto
had been shut down, most of his books were out of print,
and little was heard about his work outside of academic
circles.
Today, in the wake of a new wave of technological
innovation that has remade our world, McLuhan's insights
about the impact of electronic media are being furiously
revisited. Forward Through the Rearview Mirror is
a multidimensional, unconventional look at McLuhan's life
and ideas in the context of the information age. It is an
exploration of the man Wired magazine called "electronic
culture's immortal saint," the thinker Camille Paglia
says "created the persona of the scholar who was also
cultural commentator," the theorist Lewis Lapham credits
with explaining "why our politics are what they are,
why our entertainments are what they are." An evocative,
imaginative, and visually exciting mosaic of aphorisms and
images, Forward Through The Rearview Mirror presents
McLuhan's own words -- short prose, aphorisms, interviews,
letters, and dialogues -- alongside reminiscences about
him by today's most renowned cultural critics. Part book,
part magazine, part storyboard, Forward Through The Rearviev
Mirror is a provocative, insightful, and unprecedented
exploration of McLuhan, his message, and its meaning.
Paul Benedetti is a producer at Southam
New Media. He coordinated Understanding McLuhan,
a CD-ROM on the ideas and life of Marshall McLuhan. A graduate
of McMaster University, he joined Southam News Media in
1994, after twelve years as a reporter with the Hamilton
Spectator.
Nancy DeHart is a newspaper reporter,
online producer, and was a researcher on the CD-ROM, Understanding
McLuhan. A graduate of Carleton
University's School of Journalism, she has worked in newspapers,
multimedia, and documentary film.
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