When you see McLuhan on YouTube (check out what he says about being Canadian!), the only clues that he's not live and speaking today are the fact that he's not in color and the odd brand name (Xerox?). He's like the Malcolm X of media literacy. We "read" today the way McLuhan did in his time; it's the only way to survive! The only adaptation I've made is, I start books at the back with the index - using it as a map.
Having found media studies after formal training in fine art, I was often at a loss to make myself understood in the humanities. My only "translator" was Rudolf Arnheim. Cinema Studies 101 assigned Film As Art, but my favorite book of his was the comparatively new Visual Thinking. As his preface put it, "artistic activity is a form of reasoning, in which perceiving and thinking are indivisibly intertwined," a definition I understood to apply as much to consumers as creators, in physical and electronic media alike. Years later, I opened an issue of Leonardo and found a letter to the editor from him, complete with a home address! I contacted him about my academic homelessness and he was kind enough to reply. Unfortunately he admitted being out of the loop for long enough that he couldn't give me much advice, but he did invite me to lunch. I was afraid we'd have nothing to say, so I didn't take him up on his offer. (Meeting Robin Wood for the first time only to discover he was burnt out and trying to write a novel in San Francisco was one of the most depressing non-conversations I've ever had.) However, I'll always have a piece of his homemade stationery - personalized with his initials in red felt tip!
I passed on my first chance to see The Ascent of Man because the photo in TV Guide gave me 2001: A Space Odyssey flashbacks. I didn't get another for 4 years, and to this day I regret putting myself that much out of step.
Everything you need to know to prepare you for Web 2.0 is there, no matter how stylistically or technologically outdated the series may seem at first glance. The startling and ultimately heart-rending tour of the spectrum in Knowledge Or Certainty is a benchmark in media studies, and make no mistake: Bronowski was the "auteur" of the entire series. (Dudley Herschbach, who worked with director Adrian Malone on The Nobel Legacy, verified this to me in an interview.)
If anything, Bronowski's works (even the posthumous Magic, Science & Civilisation or The Visionary Eye) are more "of the moment" in today's political climate than ever. I've spent almost my whole life in some academic sphere or other, but I only ever heard about Gauss from Bronowski. When I finally found out - just this past month - that the computerized world of today is fundamentally the result of the modular arithmetic Gauss invented, I felt sucker-punched.
Bronowski will be my anchor until the day I die.
Marshall
When you see McLuhan on
When you see McLuhan on YouTube (check out what he says about being Canadian!), the only clues that he's not live and speaking today are the fact that he's not in color and the odd brand name (Xerox?). He's like the Malcolm X of media literacy. We "read" today the way McLuhan did in his time; it's the only way to survive! The only adaptation I've made is, I start books at the back with the index - using it as a map.
Rudolf
Having found media studies
Having found media studies after formal training in fine art, I was often at a loss to make myself understood in the humanities. My only "translator" was Rudolf Arnheim. Cinema Studies 101 assigned Film As Art, but my favorite book of his was the comparatively new Visual Thinking. As his preface put it, "artistic activity is a form of reasoning, in which perceiving and thinking are indivisibly intertwined," a definition I understood to apply as much to consumers as creators, in physical and electronic media alike. Years later, I opened an issue of Leonardo and found a letter to the editor from him, complete with a home address! I contacted him about my academic homelessness and he was kind enough to reply. Unfortunately he admitted being out of the loop for long enough that he couldn't give me much advice, but he did invite me to lunch. I was afraid we'd have nothing to say, so I didn't take him up on his offer. (Meeting Robin Wood for the first time only to discover he was burnt out and trying to write a novel in San Francisco was one of the most depressing non-conversations I've ever had.) However, I'll always have a piece of his homemade stationery - personalized with his initials in red felt tip!
Jacob
I passed on my first chance
I passed on my first chance to see The Ascent of Man because the photo in TV Guide gave me 2001: A Space Odyssey flashbacks. I didn't get another for 4 years, and to this day I regret putting myself that much out of step.
Everything you need to know to prepare you for Web 2.0 is there, no matter how stylistically or technologically outdated the series may seem at first glance. The startling and ultimately heart-rending tour of the spectrum in Knowledge Or Certainty is a benchmark in media studies, and make no mistake: Bronowski was the "auteur" of the entire series. (Dudley Herschbach, who worked with director Adrian Malone on The Nobel Legacy, verified this to me in an interview.)
If anything, Bronowski's works (even the posthumous Magic, Science & Civilisation or The Visionary Eye) are more "of the moment" in today's political climate than ever. I've spent almost my whole life in some academic sphere or other, but I only ever heard about Gauss from Bronowski. When I finally found out - just this past month - that the computerized world of today is fundamentally the result of the modular arithmetic Gauss invented, I felt sucker-punched.
Bronowski will be my anchor until the day I die.