After learning McLuhan’s work and his brilliant idea, I became more confused, other than more fascinated, than before when thinking of what and how to write an article.
Indeed this will happen to me. His ideas on the relationship between the media of writing and the writing itself are revolutionary to traditional literature, which is what I used to believe in. The contents become not that important when we consider about how the contents are shown. To be more specific and accurate: It it the media, the ways of seeing, that makes the contents meaningful and obsessing. The interesting story about the misprint of McLuhan’s book title is a perfect reflection of this idea. Even though the word “Message” was printed as “Massage”, a word with totally different meaning, and even though it may make no sense to have such a misleading word, McLuhan just let it be; and it still strikes right into our nerves, astounding us with his great mind.
“The book is an extension of the eye…” (from The Media Is The Massage). Since our eyes take in so many different forms of objects, why can’t books be like this? Why does a book have to have this convention of being a book? Why can’t it strike us like a baseball does? Why can’ we feel it as if we feel a silky scarf?
Why can’t we kill the word “book” as we really kill, and then resurrect it to be “koob”?
Yes, we can.
