Media (Past, Present And Future)

In the tradition of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, Professor Scott Gardiner approaches media as an extra somatic tool and engages in a bracingly different approach to the purpose and power of media via an investigation into its historical, psychological and technical underpinnings as well as the powerful and disturbing/benign configurations of its future. Gardiner goes beyond the usual sociological level of analysis and the readings approach to the topic. Media in all forms is seen as an extension of memory and speech(what we are born with)if medium is defined as storing and transmitting information. Next the development of storing information outside our bodies is analyzed (reading, writing, photography and film), for transmitting information outside our bodies(telephone, radio, television and for both storing and transmitting outside our bodies(internet, multimedia). Futurity and the limits of Media conclude the study. A well known Canadian researcher and scholar, Gardiner is the author of numerous books and articles on the Media and worked with Innis and McLuhan at the Toronto School of Media. “A powerful overview of the subject and its (and our) mediatised future…recommended both for its content as well as for its lively and sophisticated presentation.” Professor Ernst Bekovsky