McLuhan and Virtual Reality

Author: (English) Christopher Hollins & Liu Qianli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: McLuhan could not witness the contemporary prevalence of computers firsthand, nor could he participate in the subsequent discussions about cyberpunk, posthumanism, and controlled organisms. However, McLuhan's ideas did not disappear for long, as his inquiries inevitably involved this virtual era. Thus, his resurgence was only natural. In the 1960s, McLuhan was considered one of the most important thinkers since Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. But when he died in the 1980s, his media studies were regarded as outdated and naive. In recent years, McLuhanism has experienced a resurgence. What is the reason behind this? This book explains that the dramatic changes in media and technology have revived the debate surrounding McLuhan's famous maxim "The medium is the message." Today, his views on the global village and the concepts of hot and cold media are also applied to the discourse on the impact of virtual reality and cyberspace on human perception, psychology, and society.
The book McLuhan and Virtual Reality examines the relationship between McLuhan's thought and the information revolution, probing the complex connections between audiovisual culture and its intricate relationship with global matrices such as web pages and the internet. It also discusses the relationship between McLuhan's pronouncements and postmodern theory, as well as the connection between the resurgence of McLuhanism and the non-physicalization and virtual identity of posthuman cybernetics.