Talk:The Gutenberg Galaxy


 * Merge. Each article is stub-sized, but together would make a decent-sized article. Her Pegship 12:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Jlittlet 16:47, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Gutenafbasf.jpg
Image:Gutenafbasf.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 14:38, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I have read the arguments and so on. The original author/poster used an image from Amazon.com? Checking... I notice that Amazon.com have an image competition for the book... —Preceding unsigned comment added by MihalOrela (talk • contribs) 11:15, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Further remarks on this problem. I have just discovered that uses the image in question, with a query, and a link back to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gutenafbasf.jpg (MihalOrela (talk) 15:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC))

I have supplied an image (my own) which I consider to be fair use. It is a foto of my own copy of the book, initially placed on Flickr, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and inserted here. Since I am not an expert in these formal legal matters of "fair use" then I would appreciate any help I can get. (MihalOrela (talk) 04:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC))

Gutenberg Galaxy Index
The Gutenberg Galaxy Book (1962) is very unusual in its form. The book is of considerable interest to those who use the Internet Galaxy Book by Manuell Castells (2001). However, to find anything in the former is difficult because it lacks a "real" index.

I am trying to add such an Index. But I have problems. Specifically, there are 107 short chapters. To add these titles in the usual way gives a TOC that is extremely large (but useful). I am now studying "Wikipedia, the Missing Manual" to see what other ways might be suitable.

Any suggestions by others are very welcome.

Михал Орела 09:01, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Gutenberg Galaxy Content
What is really in the book? What does the book refer to qua book? I have introduced the Prologue which sets the scene and will provide some short quotations with appropriate references to give a sense of its content. (MihalOrela (talk) 04:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC))

size of the galaxy
the size of the galaxy is so small that I wonder why it should be of interest —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicolaennio (talk • contribs) 19:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I am looking at this section of the article now. It is a very different philosophical perspective on the meaning of "The Gutenberg Galaxy". That is to say, the Wikipedia article is really about the book of that name, NOT the nature of the book world.

Nevertheless, although short and "strange" it is a good text and should be elaborated further. I am considering doing that today. (MihalOrela (talk) 10:47, 7 August 2008 (UTC))

Notes and References
I have added the References section in order to provide inline citations. (MihalOrela (talk) 06:12, 7 August 2008 (UTC))

Changed the title to Notes and Reference (MihalOrela (talk) 10:47, 7 August 2008 (UTC))

Hmmm! Things did not look right. Have used reflist|3 instead; looks better. (MihalOrela (talk) 09:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC))

Reading Links
These are what one might think of as References. Did some serious tidying up with RefGen (MihalOrela (talk) 09:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC))

e-Links
To develop the structure and content of the Gutenberg Galaxy one needs additional resources — books, online papers, etc. a previous author has listed "the 4 epochs" as an external link. This was a significant contribution. I have expanded on this reference and lifted it to the highest possible place — that of the Marshall McLuhan Project at the University of Toronto.

I propose then to include the Marshall McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology as a major (independent) reference source.

This development will facilitate a proper independent analysis of the Gutenberg Galaxy. (MihalOrela (talk) 07:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC))

Introductory text of A. N. Other
I have not touched this... yet.

Now that the main body is developing, it will have to be re-visited some time. (MihalOrela (talk) 08:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC))

Four epochs
I have begun development of the 4 epochs as an appropriate way to access the Gutenberg Galaxy text. (MihalOrela (talk) 04:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC))

Oral tribal culture
I have added in McLuhan identifies James Joyce's Finnegans Wake as a key that unlocks something of the nature of the oral culture: “The fall (bababadalghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy.” Joyce 1964, p.1".

Now I can not find the page number of the Gutenberg Galaxy where McLuhan quotes it. The hyphenations come from my copy of Finnegans Wake. (MihalOrela (talk) 11:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC))

the village
I have added a short section with that title which throws light on both McLuhan's meeaning and use of the village and global village. What is surprising is that he draws a direct correspondence of concerns between the former Soviet Union and the advertising and PR community. (MihalOrela (talk) 18:21, 12 August 2008 (UTC))

the electric world
McLuhan sees this as underpinning the return to the oral tribal culture. The only think standing in our way is "enormous backlog of literate and mechanistic technology that renders us so helpless and inept in handling the new electric technology" p.27 (MihalOrela (talk) 18:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC))

Meaning of Gutenberg Galaxy
I have added in McLuhan's own definition of what the Gutenberg Galaxy is: The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man is a book by Marshall McLuhan, in which he analyzes the effects of mass media, especially the printing press, on European culture and human consciousness. It popularized the term global village, which refers to the idea that mass communication allows a village-like mindset to apply to the entire world; and Gutenberg Galaxy, which we may regard today to refer to the accumulated body of recorded works of human art and knowledge, especially books.

The footnote reads: Note that Marshall McLuhan himself states quite clearly that “although the main theme of this book is the Gutenberg Galaxy or a configuration of events, which lies far ahead of alphabet and of scribal culture, it needs to be known why, without alphabet, there would have been no Gutenberg. McLuhan 1962, p.40”

hence I have changed the subsequent final text to "which we may regard today to refer to" (MihalOrela (talk) 08:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC))

Finnegans Wake
Joyce's Finnegans Wake (like Shakespeare's King Lear) is one of the texts which McLuhan frequently uses throughout the book in order to weave together the various strands of his argument. I have added a short quotation which ties together The Tower of Babel with Francis Bacon. (Михал Орела 10:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC))

What "electronic" meant to McLuhan
Today we can download electronic text from Project Gutenberg, send electronic mail, and get our facts from Wikipedia. But when The Gutenberg Galaxy was written (1962), "electronic media" meant telephone, grammophone, radio, (perhaps film?) and television. These are spoken and visual media, as opposed to written/textual/printed media. The electronic transmission of text (telegraph, teletype) surely existed, but was not a mass medium that reached the general public in their electronic form. Further, electronic media were real-time and seldom recorded or stored. Libraries and reference works were all printed. It is as if you equate electronic with analog, and printed with digital. McLuhan apparently had the idea that his time was seeing the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy, the era dominated by written, digital information. Almost 50 years later, that thought seems absurd. But go back to this 1960s understanding of electronic and the concepts of "electronic mail" and "electronic text" could become the topic of an alternative future, a science fiction novel. In particular, the naming of Project Gutenberg appears to alude to the restoration of the written word in the electronic age, indeed a project to prove McLuhan wrong. --LA2 (talk) 00:03, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Electronic actually refer to electricity. McLuhan believed that meditation on the electric light (a medium without a message/content) would reveal what media is all about. TV is not a visual media, it is a tactile medium that, like the spoken work, needs all of our senses to work. What McLuhan was really interested in was how media change our sense perceptions. The Gutenberg Galaxy (or environment) refers to that environment which is dominated by the visual sense, leading to a "point of view" (in art and later in politics), linearity, repeatability, standardization, centralization etc. Electric media is oral/acoustic, which is a reversal/inversion of the Gutenberg Galaxy. The Gutenberg Galaxy is not gone: if you read lots of printed books you would belong to that galaxy because it requires you to use your visual sense; on the other hand if you watch a lot of TV you belong to the electric age as you use all of your senses. The Web with it's hypertext is anything but linear; it is inherently electric. Khawaga (talk) 02:53, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Problems with Oral Culture
Do we have any interest in noting that various scholars have problematized McLuhan's view of oral culture in the intervening decades? His arguments/assumptions are in large part based on the work of J.C. Carothers, a colonialist British psychiatrist working in Africa (he's the expert the British brought in to label certain African rebels psychotic and therefore justify the brutal quelling of the Mau Mau uprising). This issue and others are raised in (at least) Leroy Vail and Landeg White's Power and the Praise Poem: Southern African Voices in History. The appropriate pages (19-20) are viewable through Google Books. I'm not interested in starting a Criticisms section - I know what a blight those can be on a page - but the legacy of The Gutenberg Galaxy is not invariably positive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.38.175.107 (talk) 17:12, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Page 69 test reference
"Marshall McLuhan, the guru of The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), recommends that the browser turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, buy the book." The reference is incomplete. I have serious doubts that McLuhan ever said this. Seems to be an internet hoax just like the "page 99 test" that Ford Madox Ford allegedly invented (but was in fact a quote by William H. Gass).--ChickSR (talk) 10:35, 2 December 2019 (UTC)