his usage “environment” is not essentially a spatial term, nor one that relates to nature, or even necessarily to place".26 Summary Marshall McLuhan argues that technologies—from clothing to the wheel to the book and beyond—are the messages, rather than the content of the communication. Basically, in its fundamental essence, The Medium is the Massage is a graphical and creative representation of his "medium is the message" thesis explored in Understanding Media. By playing on words and using the term "massage," McLuhan suggests that modern audiences enjoy mainstream media as soothing, enjoyable, and relaxing. However, the pleasure we find in this media is deceiving, as the changes between society and technology are incongruent, perpetuating an 'Age of Anxiety'.All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences, they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. (p. 26).The Medium is the Massage demonstrates the ways the mainstream media are extensions of human senses; they ground us in physicality, but expand our ability to perceive our world to an extent impossible without them. These extensions of perception contribute to McLuhan's theory of the global village, which would bring humanity full-circle to an industrial analogue of tribal mentality. Finally, McLuhan describes points of change in how people view their universe and the ways in which those views are affected and altered by the adoption of new mainstream media. "The technique of invention was the discovery of the [19th century]," brought on by the adoption of fixed points of view and perspective by typography; while "[t]he technique of the suspended judgment is the discovery of the twentieth century," brought on by the bard abilities of radio, movie, and television programming. Fiore, at the time a prominent graphic designer and communications consultant, composed the visual illustration of these effects compiled by Jerome Agel. Near the beginning of the book, Fiore adopted a pattern in which an image demonstrating a MainStream media effect was presented with a textual synopsis on the facing page. The reader experiences a repeated shifting of analytic registers—from "reading" typographic print to "scanning" photographic facsimiles—reinforcing McLuhan's argument in this book: each mainstream medium produces a different "massage" or "effect" on the human sensorium. Related project An audio recording based on the book was released by Columbia Records in 1967, produced by John Simon but otherwise keeping the same credits as