title: Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium
author:  Paul Levinson 
description: In this interesting if narrow work, Levinson (The Soft Edge, LJ 2/1/98) explains why Marshall McLuhans theories about the media are more relevant in todays digital age than when they were first presented during the age of television. Levinson points out that the Internet will be the vehicle for a convergence of books, television, and other media such as the telephone, thus making it much more, much different from any prior media. He then applies McLuhans tetrad, the four laws of media, which shift from warning us to remove our past-tinted glasses when looking at the future to indicating what type of territory we might see when those glasses are removed. McLuhan led the way in understanding the relationship of humans to technology; as Levinson attempts to show, his principles have been validated by the Internetwhich to many readers may already be obvious. Recommended for specialized collections.Joe J. Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago<BR>Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: L E
  I
  I
  E R S
  () F
  MARSHALL
  McLUHAN
  SELECTED AND EDITED BY
  Matic Molinaro
  Corinne McLuhan
  William Toye
  Called an "oracle" and a "sage", Marshall
  McLuhan (191 1-1980) became one of the most
  famous men of the sixties and seventies and the
  involuntary founder of an unofficial cult. A
  French word {mcluhanisme) was coined from
  his name. His reputation as a communications
  theorist was established by two of many books.
  The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typo-
  graphic Man (1962) explains how society and
  human p&ychology were changed when pre-
  literate oral culture was supplanted with the
  invention of the phonetic alphabet and a manu-
  script culture gave way to the Gutenberg era of
  movable type, the printing press, and mass-
  produced books. Understanding Media: The
  Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan
  1
  s most
  widely read book, explores the electronic age
  and
  its effects on individuals and society.
  The
  letters in this collection—which
  in the
  earl>
  years provide a fascinating background
  cLuhan's l