This is a very late review. The past weeks have been filled with other work: NSF grant due dates, the research mania that comes from good results, and the research slog that comes with bad ones. But I also feared writing this review in my downtime. I wasn't sure what to say.

This is the last book I read on that purple couch. The last that I can think of anyways. I always preferred working night shifts. The first few hours could be spent reading before I dozed off. To be honest, though, this book review is a combo of this and Marshall McLuhan's more serious and tedious Understanding Media.

I preferred this one of course. There is actually a lot to dislike about both of these books, and frankly, it seems like very little of what Marshall McLuhan was trying to convey really sank into the public consciousness beyond the pithy line "the medium is the message". This is because so much of his sweeping statements turned out to be wrong.

This is the dangerous allure of psychedelic materialism. When you are alone in making these observations there is nobody to share your vision who can check your sanity. So McLuhan, like Debord, says lots of beautifully crazy things which resonated with me when I would doze off into a vivid dream. But more than other books from my past I have grown more critical of it with time.

Why did this book change me? It still impressed itself on my consciousness because of its technological determinism. It also led me to the more focused book which, though I think better, owes a lot to McLuhan. And I still think of things with this McLuhan approach at times, especially when considering the written word in all its forms. Linguists frequently dismiss writing systems as mere technology. I believe they are wrong.