Message Massage: Ideas on social communication

What's a message? What's language? What's communication?  

There is an old and rare book that tries to explain. Its name is The Medium is the Massage - the link to Amazon is affiliate. You read it right: "the massage". Apparently, this was caused by a typo and the authors loved it, or so it's said. 

The authors were Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Angel. This "message massage" was a product of the 1960s, but it has prophetic ideas that hold true in our times. 

Some excerpts. 

"Time" has ceased, "space" has vanished. We now live in a global village… a simultaneous happening.

We shifted our attention from action to reaction.

As soon as information is acquired, it’s very rapidly replaced by still newer information.

The living room has become a voting room.

Everything is changing – You, your family, your neighborhood, your education, your job, your government, your relation to "the others".

We look to the present through the rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen.

Real, total war has become information war.

Propaganda ends where dialogue begins.

Do some ideas sound familiar?

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