Editing Marshall McLuhan (section)

=== ''The Medium Is the Massage''<!-- "MASSAGE" IS CORRECT, EDITORS, PLEASE NOTE: "The Medium is the MASSAGE" is the correct title. Please DO NOT change "Massage" to "Message" here --> (1967) ===
{{Main|The Medium Is the Massage}}
''[[The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects]]'', published in 1967, was McLuhan's best seller,<ref name="wired saint">[[Gary Wolf (journalist)|Wolf, Gary]]. 1 January 1996. "[https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.01/saint.marshal.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set= The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, the Holy Fool] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103180203/http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.01/saint.marshal.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set= |date=2012-11-03 }}." [[Wired (magazine)|''Wired'']] 4(1). Retrieved 24 June 2020.</ref> "eventually selling nearly a million copies worldwide."<ref>Marchand, p. 203</ref> Initiated by [[Quentin Fiore]],{{sfn|M. McLuhan|Fiore|1967}} McLuhan adopted the term "massage" to denote the effect each medium has on the human [[sensorium]], taking inventory of the "effects" of numerous media in terms of how they "massage" the sensorium.{{efn|According to McLuhan biographer W. Terrence Gordon, {{blockquote|by the time it appeared in 1967, McLuhan no doubt recognized that his original saying had become a cliché and welcomed the opportunity to throw it back on the compost heap of language to recycle and revitalize it.  But the new title is more than McLuhan indulging his insatiable taste for puns, more than a clever fusion of self-mockery and self-rescue—the subtitle is 'An Inventory of Effects,' underscoring the lesson compressed into the original saying.{{sfn|Gordon|1997|p=175}}}}<p>However, the FAQ section on the website maintained by McLuhan's estate says that this interpretation is incomplete and makes its own leap of logic as to why McLuhan left it as is: </p>{{blockquote|Why is the title of the book ''The Medium Is the Massage'' and not ''The Medium is the Message''? Actually, the title was a mistake. When the book came back from the typesetter's, it had on the cover "Massage" as it still does. The title was supposed to have read ''The Medium is the Message'', but the typesetter had made an error. When McLuhan saw the typo he exclaimed, "Leave it alone! It's great, and right on target!" Now there are possible four readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: ''Message'' and ''Mess Age'', ''Massage'' and ''Mass Age''.}}}}

Fiore, at the time a prominent [[graphic designer]] and communications consultant, set about composing the visual illustration of these effects which were compiled by Jerome Agel. Near the beginning of the book, Fiore adopted a pattern in which an image demonstrating a media effect was presented with a [[Textuality|textual]] synopsis on the facing page. The reader experiences a repeated shifting of analytic registers—from "reading" [[Typography|typographic print]] to "scanning" photographic [[facsimile]]s—reinforcing McLuhan's overarching argument in this book: namely, that each medium produces a different "massage" or "effect" on the human sensorium.

In ''The Medium Is the Massage'',<!-- BOOK TITLE IS MASSAGE NOT MESSAGE DO NOT CHANGE --> McLuhan also rehashed the argument—which first appeared in the Prologue to 1962's ''The Gutenberg Galaxy''—that all media are "extensions" of our human senses, bodies and minds.

Finally, McLuhan described key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views were changed by the adoption of new media. "The technique of invention was the discovery of the nineteenth [century]", brought on by the adoption of fixed points of view and perspective by typography, while "[t]he technique of the [[suspension of judgement|suspended judgment]] is the discovery of the twentieth century," brought on by the [[bard]] abilities of radio, movies and television.{{sfn|M. McLuhan|1964|p=68}}<blockquote>The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backward into the future. Suburbia lives imaginatively in [[Bonanza]]-land.{{sfn|M. McLuhan|Fiore|2008|pp=74–75}}</blockquote>An audio recording version of McLuhan's famous work was made by [[Columbia Records]]. The recording consists of a pastiche of statements made by McLuhan ''interrupted'' by other speakers, including people speaking in various [[phonation]]s and [[falsetto]]s, discordant sounds and 1960s incidental music in what could be considered a deliberate attempt to translate the disconnected images seen on TV into an audio format, resulting in the prevention of a connected stream of conscious thought. Various audio recording techniques and statements are used to illustrate the relationship between spoken, literary speech and the characteristics of electronic audio media. McLuhan biographer Philip Marchand called the recording "the 1967 equivalent of a McLuhan video."{{sfn|Marchand|1998|p=187}}<blockquote>"I wouldn't be seen dead with a living work of art."—'Old man' speaking

"Drop this jiggery-pokery and talk straight turkey."—"Middle-aged man" speaking</blockquote>