メディアはマッサージである
On June 11, I finished reading a book called The Medium is the Massage. Here is a screenshot of the book cover: https://gyazo.com/c738ee358b24593d9a7f9fa32523bce1. To be honest, I didn't fully understand the book. It had a lot of visual elements and the text was presented in an experimental collage style, which made it feel less like a traditional book.
The book is written by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. It explores the concept of how various media "massage" our senses and influence us. It's different from McLuhan's previous work, The Medium is the Message, where he argued that technology, from clothing to books, is not just a means of communication but also a message itself. McLuhan believes that all media have a profound impact on every aspect of our lives, including personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social aspects, and that they shape us without us even realizing it (p. 26). This book is considered one of the theories in media theory. I came across this book because it was mentioned on Outland, so I decided to buy it. Here is the link to the article: Predicting the Present - Outland. The article discusses how in 1967, editor Jerome Agel described McLuhan's book as "predicting the present." That same year, science fiction writer J.G. Ballard stated in an interview that he was no longer interested in setting his speculative fiction in the distant future, but rather in focusing on the present because it can split in countless strange ways. The article also introduces two new terms coined by the author: "Lorecore," which refers to the existential need for people to narrate their own stories in an era where global narratives have collapsed under digital capitalism, and "endcore," which represents a historical endpoint that is both visible and yet never actually arrives. These terms reflect the current state of affairs. In 2022, Collins Dictionary chose "permacrisis" as the Word of the Year, and the Oxford English Dictionary chose "goblin mode."