Marshall McLuhan was the visionary theorist best known for coining the phrase “the medium is the message.” His work prefigures and underlies the themes of writers and artists as disparate and essential as Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Neil Postman, Seth Godin, Barbara Kruger, and Douglas Rushkoff, among countless others. Shortly before his death, together with his media scholar son Eric, McLuhan worked on a new literary/visual code–almost a cross between hieroglyphics and poetry–that he called “the tetrads.” This was the ultimate theoretical framework for analyzing any new medium, a koan-like poetics that transcends traditional means of discourse. Some of the tetrads were published, but only a few. Now Eric McLuhan has recovered all the “lost” tetrads that he and his father developed, and accompanies them here with accessible explanations of how they function.

What do we think of when we think of literary critics? Enlightenment snobs in powdered wigs? Professional experts? Cloistered academics? Through the end of the 20th century, book review columns and literary magazines held onto an evolving but stable critical paradigm, premised on expertise, objectivity, and carefully measured response. And then the Internet happened. From the editors of Review 31 and 3:AM Magazine, The Digital Critic brings together a diverse group of perspectives—early-adopters, Internet skeptics, bloggers, novelists, editors, and others—to address the future of literature and scholarship in a world of Facebook likes, Twitter wars, and Amazon book reviews. It takes stock of the so-called Literary Internet up to the present moment, and considers the future of criticism: its promise, its threats of decline, and its mutation, perhaps, into something else entirely. With contributions from Robert Barry, Russell Bennetts, Michael Bhaskar, Louis Bury, Lauren Elkin, Scott Esposito, Marc Farrant, Orit Gat, Thea Hawlin, Ellen Jones, Anna Kiernan, Luke Neima, Will Self, Jonathon Sturgeon, Sara Veale, Laura Waddell, and Joanna Walsh.

An Italian philosopher, psychologist and robotics engineer, Manzotti presents an alternative and ecological hypothesis about how consciousness exists in the real world.

Originally published: Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Digination offers an inter-disciplinary, broad overview of the psychic, social, and institutional effects of some of the most popular digital communication technologies and applications operating today. Written in an engaging style appropriate for non-specialist readers interested in broadening their awareness and enhancing their understanding of popular trends in media use.

This groundbreaking book uses observations made by Marshall McLuhan to analyze the aesthetics of science fiction films, treating them as visual metaphors or probes into the new reality dominated by electronic media: - it considers the relations between the senses and sensuality in Blade Runner, the visually-tactile character of the film, and the status of replicants as humanity’s new clothes; - it analyzes the mixture of Eastern and Western aesthetics in Star Wars, analyzing Darth Vader as a combination of the literate and the tribal mindset; - it discusses the failure of visual society presented in the Terminator and Alien franchises, the rekindling of horror vacui, tribalism, and the desire to obliterate the past as a result of the simultaneity of the acoustic space; - finally, the book discusses the Matrix trilogy and Avatar as being deeply related in terms of the growing importance of tactility, easternization, tribalization, as well as connectivity and the implosion of human civilization.

Companies constantly present technological developments-new materials, new mechanisms, and new ways to enhance existing products and services. Yet these seldom lead to truly new ideas. Why? Humans are all born with creative instincts, but in the interest of efficient and predictable productivity, institutions such as schools and businesses routinely hinder those impulses. The most innovative products and services, author Alexander Manu argues, arise out of the behaviors of play--the ability to imagine, without limits, the question "What if...?" Manu's engaging and inspiring book offers companies a wealth of practical advice and tactics to unleash their full creative potential and break ahead of the crowd. Manu's provocative, insightful applied methodologies for creating new business opportunities and transformative innovations gain resonance from real-world scenarios and conversations with leading innovators such as MIT's Mitchel Resnick. Readers will learn strategies to: Open their companies' eyes to unseen opportunities Spark the imagination and trigger the potential of product innovation teams Turn inspired ideas into successful products and services. Imagination Challenge is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA.