McLuhan divided man's communinacation medium into 3 eras and they are namely :
- Oral era
- Manuscript era
- Gutenberg era
- Electronic era
Manuscript era came with advent of writing. It was reserved for the elites, religious leaders and the policy-makers of that period. Many philosophers spoke against the culture of writing as they felt it will make man forget one of his most "intelligent " attributes : memorizing. This era does not include the eras of hieroglyphics , drawings and paintings that was in use during the wholly - oral era. The manuscript era eventually became a double-edged era, on the positive side, many information that eventually became useful later on were recorded in writing; these informations would have ended up as a folklore which would in turn be inaccurate or would have been totally lost. On the negative side, the human race lost one of its most defining talents: memorising. The manuscript era which McLuhan also called " The Scribal era" also helped in the compilation of many books especially the bible. For many years it was a form of art reserved for the elites.
Gutenberg era arrived when a businessman from Mainz , Germany, Johannes Gutenburg loaned some money from friends and family members to invest in the manufacture of the world's first movable types which eventually gave birth to the world's frst Printing Press. This invention will eventually lead to the popularisation of literacy. It was this era that McLuhan focused on. This era will give rise to books which in turn propagated reading around Europe and eventually around the world. The Gutenberg era gave rise to many ideologies including Socialism, individualism, Independence, Capitalism and even women rights.
When McLuhan wrote the book, Gutenbeg Galaxy, he spoke extensively about the Electronic era; that era was yet to be borne when he wrote his masterpiece in the early 60's. He stated that the "electrifying era" will take us back to interdependalism which is similar to the Oral era. He predicted that this era will turn the universe into a "global village". The term "global village" will eventually be one of the gains of McLuhan's book as it refers to what the electronic media has turned our complex universe into.
The book has been renowned for its predictive insights as well as for its analysis of various periods that culminated into the Gutenberg era which was the era McLuhan was when he wrote the book. "The book could have wrtten by anybody"... many critics including McLuha have attested to this fact but with McLuhan's mosaic authorship, the book would have been just an ordinary book if it was written by just anybody. McLuhan picked different ideas from different sources to finally arrive with the "Gutenberg Galaxy".
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