The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control
by Jacob Siegel · 24 Mar 2026 · 348pp · 103,246 words
of Typographic Man. The first chapter of Understanding Media contains what is probably McLuhan’s best-known idea and a metonym for his broader philosophy: “The medium is the message.” What he meant by that memorable phrase was that the technologies we use also shape us by changing the pace, scale, and rhythms of how
Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement
by Amy Lang and Daniel Lang/levitsky · 11 Jun 2012 · 537pp · 99,778 words
as it does in disobedient reclamations of the commons? For a month and a half, it has been an almost-sacred tenet of OWS that the medium is the message, that the reclamation of privatized public space not only for engaged citizenship, but also for free food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, libraries, education, wifi and more
The Message
by Ta-Nehisi Coates · 2 Oct 2024 · 143pp · 49,411 words
how efficiently—how “meekly”—they “receive, memorize, and repeat” that information. A teacher delivers the student information and the student succeeds by repeating it. But the medium is the message: What is being learned by students is not just the facts they memorize but the purpose of this knowledge: The more students work at storing
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
by Cal Newport · 5 Jan 2016
digital hipsters equate such nostalgia with Luddism and boredom, and believe that increased connection is the foundation for a utopian future. Marshall McLuhan declared that “the medium is the message,” but our current conversation on these topics seems to imply that “the medium is morality”—either you’re on board with the Facebook future or
Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace
by Ronald J. Deibert · 13 May 2013 · 317pp · 98,745 words
did not emphasize it, that thesis is part of a larger tradition of theorizing about communications technology associated most prominently with Canadian academics Marshall McLuhan (“the medium is the message”) and Harold Innis (“the bias of communications”). According to this tradition, communications technologies are rarely neutral and their material properties – the wires, cables, machines themselves
Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe
by Antony Loewenstein · 1 Sep 2015 · 464pp · 121,983 words
so fully privatized,” Klein argues, “that they are themselves the new market: there is no need to wait until after the war for the boom—the medium is the message.”15 These ideological changes are implemented by force, despite the routine opposition to them expressed by populations across the world—if they know about the
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
by Rick Perlstein · 1 Jan 2008 · 1,351pp · 404,177 words
,” as the blurb to his 1964 magnum opus, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, called him. A key hinge of that book’s argument that “the medium is the message” was his exegesis of the Kennedy-Nixon debates. He thought Nixon resembled the railway lawyer in westerns “who signs leases that are not in the
Social Life of Information
by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid · 2 Feb 2000 · 791pp · 85,159 words
by journalists in the context of the medium and the audience. There's no need to go as far as Marshall McLuhan's claim that the "medium is the message" to see that the medium is not an indifferent carrier here. 17 The newspaper, then, is rather like the librarynot simply a collection of news
The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
by Brian Dear · 14 Jun 2017 · 708pp · 223,211 words
square-wave musical tones. The kids, on the other hand, are used to finger-paints, water colors, color television, real musical instruments, and records. If the “medium is the message,” then the message of low-bandwidth timesharing is “blah.” PLATO meant time-sharing, and Kay was religious in his dislike of it. But the prototype
Work! Consume! Die!
by Frankie Boyle · 12 Oct 2011
-rate EastEnders. Television is just a distraction, really, a jangling set of keys hoisted nightly in front of our stupid, drooling faces. Marshall McLuhan said, ‘The medium is the message,’ meaning that the way TV makes us think – the shorter attention span, the dullness to sensation – is more important than its content. Railways changed the
Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul
by Kurt Wagner · 20 Feb 2024 · 332pp · 127,754 words
A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload
by Cal Newport · 2 Mar 2021 · 350pp · 90,898 words
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
by Rick Perlstein · 17 Mar 2009 · 1,037pp · 294,916 words
Alone Together
by Sherry Turkle · 11 Jan 2011 · 542pp · 161,731 words
Atrocity Archives
by Stross, Charles · 13 Jan 2004 · 404pp · 113,514 words
Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security
by Daniel J. Solove · 28 Jun 2011 · 257pp · 72,251 words
The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection
by Michael Harris · 6 Aug 2014 · 259pp · 73,193 words
You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall
by Colin Ellard · 6 Jul 2009 · 293pp · 97,431 words
Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix
by Dade Hayes and Dawn Chmielewski · 18 Apr 2022 · 414pp · 117,581 words
Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
by Alec Nevala-Lee · 1 Aug 2022 · 864pp · 222,565 words
Hard Landing
by Thomas Petzinger and Thomas Petzinger Jr. · 1 Jan 1995 · 726pp · 210,048 words
Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives
by Satyajit Das · 15 Nov 2006 · 349pp · 134,041 words
What Would Google Do?
by Jeff Jarvis · 15 Feb 2009 · 299pp · 91,839 words
Collaborative Futures
by Mike Linksvayer, Michael Mandiberg and Mushon Zer-Aviv · 24 Aug 2010 · 188pp · 9,226 words
When Things Start to Think
by Neil A. Gershenfeld · 15 Feb 1999 · 238pp · 46 words
Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future
by John Brockman · 18 Jan 2011 · 379pp · 109,612 words
Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
by Douglas Rushkoff · 21 Mar 2013 · 323pp · 95,939 words
Dealers of Lightning
by Michael A. Hiltzik · 27 Apr 2000 · 559pp · 157,112 words
The Internet Is Not the Answer
by Andrew Keen · 5 Jan 2015 · 361pp · 81,068 words
Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction
by Derek Thompson · 7 Feb 2017 · 416pp · 108,370 words
Yes Please
by Amy Poehler
The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture
by Scott Belsky · 1 Oct 2018 · 425pp · 112,220 words
Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys: 50th Anniversary Edition
by Michael Collins and Charles A. Lindbergh · 15 Apr 2019
How to Survive a Pandemic
by Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM · 1,072pp · 237,186 words
Data and the City
by Rob Kitchin,Tracey P. Lauriault,Gavin McArdle · 2 Aug 2017
Reset
by Ronald J. Deibert · 14 Aug 2020
Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy
by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson · 30 May 2016 · 324pp · 89,875 words
Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
by Nicholas Carr · 28 Jan 2025 · 231pp · 85,135 words
Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again
by Johann Hari · 25 Jan 2022 · 390pp · 120,864 words
How to Stand Up to a Dictator
by Maria Ressa · 19 Oct 2022
Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing (Writing Science)
by Thierry Bardini · 1 Dec 2000
The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy
by Tyler Cowen · 25 May 2010 · 254pp · 72,929 words
Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations
by Nicholas Carr · 5 Sep 2016 · 391pp · 105,382 words
The Dice Man
by Luke Rhinehart · 1 Jan 1971 · 524pp · 143,596 words
Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America
by Giles Slade · 14 Apr 2006 · 384pp · 89,250 words
The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
by Ray Kurzweil · 31 Dec 1998 · 696pp · 143,736 words
Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk
by Satyajit Das · 14 Oct 2011 · 741pp · 179,454 words
The Bitcoin Guidebook: How to Obtain, Invest, and Spend the World's First Decentralized Cryptocurrency
by Ian Demartino · 2 Feb 2016 · 296pp · 86,610 words
Beyond: Our Future in Space
by Chris Impey · 12 Apr 2015 · 370pp · 97,138 words
To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
by Evgeny Morozov · 15 Nov 2013 · 606pp · 157,120 words
The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis
by Jeremy Rifkin · 31 Dec 2009 · 879pp · 233,093 words
World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech
by Franklin Foer · 31 Aug 2017 · 281pp · 71,242 words
The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life
by Robert Wright · 1 Jan 1994 · 604pp · 161,455 words
The Rise of the Network Society
by Manuel Castells · 31 Aug 1996 · 843pp · 223,858 words
The Internet of Money
by Andreas M. Antonopoulos · 28 Aug 2016 · 200pp · 47,378 words
The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)
by Jamie Bartlett · 4 Apr 2018 · 170pp · 49,193 words
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
by Kyle Chayka · 15 Jan 2024 · 321pp · 105,480 words
In Europe
by Geert Mak · 15 Sep 2004
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
by Robert Wright · 28 Dec 2010
The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider
by Michiko Kakutani · 20 Feb 2024 · 262pp · 69,328 words
Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution
by Leonard Shlain · 2 Aug 2004 · 607pp · 168,497 words
More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws
by John R. Lott · 15 May 2010 · 456pp · 185,658 words
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
by John M. Barry · 9 Feb 2004 · 667pp · 186,968 words
Television Is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age
by Michael Wolff · 22 Jun 2015 · 172pp · 46,104 words
Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots
by John Markoff · 24 Aug 2015 · 413pp · 119,587 words
Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything
by Steven Levy · 2 Feb 1994 · 244pp · 66,599 words
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
by Jerry Mander · 1 Jan 1977
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman and Jeff Riggenbach Ph. · 1 Apr 2013 · 204pp · 61,491 words
The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America
by Sarah Kendzior · 24 Apr 2015 · 172pp · 48,747 words
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph From the Frontiers of Brain Science
by Norman Doidge · 15 Mar 2007 · 515pp · 136,938 words
Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
by Douglas Rushkoff · 7 Sep 2022 · 205pp · 61,903 words
The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community
by Marc J. Dunkelman · 3 Aug 2014 · 327pp · 88,121 words
The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine
by Peter Lunenfeld · 31 Mar 2011 · 239pp · 56,531 words
Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson (History of Computing)
by Douglas R. Dechow · 2 Jul 2015 · 223pp · 52,808 words
Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
by Robert W. McChesney · 5 Mar 2013 · 476pp · 125,219 words
Magic Internet Money: A Book About Bitcoin
by Jesse Berger · 14 Sep 2020 · 108pp · 27,451 words
But What if We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present as if It Were the Past
by Chuck Klosterman · 6 Jun 2016 · 281pp · 78,317 words
Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Inside Technology)
by Geoffrey C. Bowker · 24 Aug 2000
Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences
by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star · 25 Aug 2000 · 357pp · 125,142 words