{"product_id":"understanding-media-the-extensions-of-man-by-marshall-mcluhan","title":"'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man' by Marshall McLuhan","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"67\" data-end=\"732\"\u003eMarshall McLuhan’s \u003cem data-start=\"86\" data-end=\"107\"\u003eUnderstanding Media\u003c\/em\u003e is one of the great, unruly foundation texts of media theory.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"67\" data-end=\"732\"\u003eThis is the book that gives us “the medium is the message,” but also a much stranger and more expansive account of technology, communication, perception, nervous systems, social organisation and modern life. McLuhan’s central argument is not simply that media carry content, but that media reshape the conditions through which content, bodies, politics, habits and thought become possible in the first place. Print, radio, television, roads, money, clocks, cars, weapons, advertising: everything becomes a medium, and every medium becomes an extension of the human body.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"734\" data-end=\"1342\"\u003eIt is a book of brilliant overreach, moving by aphorism, leap, analogy and provocation rather than neat academic argument, and the result still feels alive: prophetic, irritating, funny, slippery, very often right in ways that make the present feel less original than it would like to think. Essential for readers interested in media theory, technology, internet culture, cybernetics, communications, cultural studies, advertising, design, digital life, and the prehistory of basically every “the platform has changed our brains” argument currently circulating.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1344\" data-end=\"1712\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRoutledge paperback. First published in England 1964; ARK Paperbacks edition 1987; this copy is the 1994 Routledge reprint. Good reading copy.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45705512583251,"sku":null,"price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/thebowerbooker-2026-06-16T191726.171.png?v=1781601494","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/understanding-media-the-extensions-of-man-by-marshall-mcluhan","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}