I love typography. I love designing it, I love looking at it, and with this book, I learned that I love to read it. I like the way it clicks with my artsy brain. The photos, the inverted/repeated/upside down/ italicized words and the seemingly unrelated photos, my brain understands that. Sometimes I can read a picture better than I can read words.
Which is (not so) ironic, because one of McLuhan's points in The Medium is the Massage is how different mediums effect us differently. A book reads different than a picture book reads different than an audio book reads different from a pdf of a book. For me, I've found that I people become rushed and revert to "skimming" an article when reading online, which is why I always print my pdf's out and read them as if they are a book, because I relate that to "scholarly learning time" and don't rush myself the way I would rush down my Facebook newsfeed.
I do think it's funny how he writes his ideas on modern technology, (which is fast, expansive and all-inclusive,) through the form of a book, which private, isolated, and and individualized. (Yes, I realize the book was written 1967.) I'm curious as to what he'd said about technology and the internet in today's lifestyle. What would he say about Facebook profiles? - talk about public! Or how governments, schools and newspapers have gone digital, the way information is relayed through those sources is completely different from 40, let alone 4 years ago. The internet changes everyday, and the way we interact with it is changing everyday as well. Companies just can't keep up. As McLuhan said, "They're doing today's job with yesterday's technology."
