《计算机专业英语》第三章 英文原文.docVIP

Chapter three Section A the media is the massage During the 1960s, a Canadian literary scholar, Marshall McLuhan, gained worldwide prominence as someone who had a profound understanding of electronic media and their impact on both culture and society. In a series of books so densely written as to be almost unreadable ( the ironically titled Understanding Media [1964] is a good example ), McLuhan outlined his vision of the changes that were taking place as result of the spread of radio and television. He proclaimed that the medium is the message. In other words, new forms of media (message) transform our experience of ourselves and our society, and this influence is ultimately more important than the content that is transmitted in its specific messages. McLuhan coined several phrases and terms that have become part of the common vocabulary we use to talk about media and society. He suggested the terms global village to refer to the new form of social organization that would inevitably emerge as instantaneous, electric media tied the entire world into one great social, political, and cultural system. McLuhan didn’t bother to concern himself with questions about control over this village or whether village members would be exploited. To McLuhan, these questions didn’t matter. He was more concerned with microscopic issues, with the impact of media on our senses. McLuhan proclaimed media to be the extensions of man hand argued that media quite literally extend sight, heating, and touch through time and space. Electric media would open up new vistas for average people and enable us to be everywhere, instantaneously. But was this an egalitarian and democratic vision? What would ordinary people do when their senses were extended in this way? Would they succumb to information overload? Would they be stimulated to greater participation in politics? Would they flee into the virtual worlds that were opened up to them by their extended senses? In a series of book, occasionally