Exploring Space with McLuhan: Insights for the Digital Age

This book investigates the spatial relations between digital media and society, relying on Marshall McLuhan’s probes into the effects of communication technology. It argues that McLuhan’s ideas may be relevant to understanding how contemporary space, digital media, and society adapt to one another. This aim is pursued in three steps. First, McLuhan’s media theory is discussed with a focus on the effects of media in structuring the conditions of space perception at both the individual and the social levels. The concepts of visual and acoustic space are examined in relation to mechanical and electric media, respectively. Second, McLuhan’s lifelong interest in the city as a learning environment is contrasted with his claim that cities are obsolete vis-à-vis the global village of instant electronic communication. The contradiction is more apparent than real, as McLuhan imagined a future for cities as programmed environments for the sensory training of citizens and actively engaged in discussions with urban planners and designers. Third, McLuhan’s insights are extended beyond his time to make sense of the current relationship between digital media, space, and urban society. The evolution of cyberspace from a virtual realm to its hybridisation with physical space is traced across both literary and scholarly sources. The effects of a hybrid space concept on urban planning and design approaches in the digital age are explored. McLuhan’s legacy, with its humanistic breadth, enables an understanding of the present media ecology that moves beyond the efficiency-oriented paradigm of the smart city discourse. The book bridges technological consciousness and social responsibility in the fields of space theory and spatial planning. It targets an audience that is open to interdisciplinary dialogue between science and the humanities to promote sustainable cities and communities.