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The Book of Probes

marshall mcluhan david carson eric mcluhan william kuhns

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Until now, no book has explored the full expanse of Marshall McLuhan's thinking. Here we have assembled alongside his most prescient aphorisms excerpts from the full range of his astounding life's work. One revolutionary book distills the wisdom and wit of the man who explained to us the "the medium is the message" and that we are "now living in a global village", that "privacy invasion is now our most important knowledge industry" and that "obsolescence is the moment of superabundance". Cover to cover, Anthology is not only one hundred percent McLuhan's own words, these are McLuhan's finest words. McLuhan called these bold perceptions probes and today they gleam like gems embedded everywhere in his life's output - in his books, in more than 200 speeches, in his classes (especially the Monday Night Seminars), and most of all in the nearly 700 shorter writings that he published between 1945 and 1980. In recent years, his son Eric McLuhan and William Kuhns have combed through all these sources to compile and edit what has become Anthology - The Book of Probes. The collection is so fresh that most probes will be new to even the most avid readers of McLuhan, and opens a new portal to McLuhan's mind, one that promises to change the ways in which we recognize and interpret McLuhan in the future. Readers will marvel at how the consistency, the clarity of concept, and the abundant wealth of observations, some made twenty or thirty years apart, dovetail to form a whole. Art Director and Designer David Carson presents McLuhan's images with new insight, and has built a work of art that is reminiscent of those lasting works permanently commissioned and interpreted by new generations.

576 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1,2003

This edition

Format
576 pages, Hardcover
Published
November 1, 2003 by Gingko Pr Inc
ISBN
9781584230564
ASIN
1584230568
Language
English

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About the author

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marshall mcluhan

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Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as the "father of media studies".
McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.2 / 5.0, 6 votes)
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6 reviews All reviews
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Hengao
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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I read this book all wrong - I started at the beginning and read sequentially until I reached the end. Carson's artwork pairs excellently with the hardened little jewels of McLuhan's probes. I'm going to have to buy this so I can read it correctly - randomly flip it open, contemplate a single probe or two in depth, and then leave the book on a windowsill to revisited after days or weeks.
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Yon_Nyan
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Another book that I'll keep close to my bedside. It's very nicely designed, full of excellent probes by MM augmented by an excellent introduction and three marvellous chapters. Highly recommended for the McLuhan connoisseur that I gradually seem to become. Thanks for editing the book, David Carson
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SCLFI
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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I came across an old assignment from Graphic Design class with a few pages from this book. From the numerous quotes and art work that I included in the assignment I must have found this a very interesting book. A couple of the quotes: Advertising is the art form of the 20th century. Why is America the land of the overrated child and the underrated adult? How can children grow up in a world in which adults idolize youthfulness?
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RaikoTheSaikou
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Not "a splendid introduction" to "the full force of Marshall McLuhan's mind and process". The approach to formatting "a collection to McLuhan's finest words" as a collection of probes is interesting and could have had potential as a concept where prescient or timeless thoughts are expressed in short writing and complementary graphics. But as it stands the book probably appeals more to those who are already somewhat familiar with McLuhan's thoughts and who possess the requisite context, and/or some certain type of necessary intellect, to be able to interpret and use the probes meaningfully. Otherwise the probes might be easily refuted or even dismissed as pretentious 1960's bullshit dressed up in 1990's graphic design. For the rest of us McLuhan's aphorisms should probably not be used as-is -- they might well fail to allude, intimate or imply some insight -- but as counterfactual provocations or nostradamic predictions, with pages flipped at random and not read from cover to cover.
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ZackTyce
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Like Kafka and Freud, McLuhan is a writer who is often referred to or quoted without being understood, resulting in a shorthand for cultural conditions that everyone recognizes but few can articulate. This title provides a refreshing representation of the philosopher's work, artfully arraying his ideas as brief statements in the space of the page and setting them against stunning imagery and design work by David Carson
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