Books
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Imagologies: Media Philosophy
My book Imagologies: Media Philosophy (Routledge 1994, with Mark C. Taylor) is out of print but I continue to be proud of it. Some comments on it:
"This profound and prescient 'book' enacts and enunciates a new philosophy of communication...a form and content of reflection that points to the role of philosophy in a global economy of telecommunications and micro-electronics" (Cornell West, Princeton University).
"It is almost a banality to say that the information age demands new paradigms for communications, in form as well as content. Yet the accuracy of the observation is driven home with palpable energy and insight in this "book" by Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen. Taylor and Saarinen conduct a verbal and visual dialogue, collage ideas, and develop insights within a framework and format that is simultaneously rigorous and spontaneous. This expansive text is not so much read as experienced. It is the work in the print medium that closely captures the process of creative development that generates from inspired associative thinking." (Thomas Krens, Director of the Guggenheim Museum)
"Here is an anti-book for the image age. By turns dazzling and affecting, techinical and poignant, the virtual real authors sweep from economics to erotics, covering speed and space, money, the future of education, the role of the intellectual in the electronic age. We are all cyborgs now, plugged into our image machines...Imagologies synthesizes this new world order with savage candour, calling on us to wake up to the state of our own consciousness. It readies us for the next big stage of human evolution. The show is not on, and it's hot. Don't miss it!" (Colin McGinn, University of Miami)
Contents
Communicative Practices
Simcult
Styles
Naiveté
Media Philosophy
Ending the Academy
Pedagogies
Videovisions
Televangelism
Superficiality
Telewriting
Ad-diction
Interstanding
Netropolis
Electronomics
Telepolitics
Speed
Telerotics
Cyberwar
Virtuality
Body Snatching
Cyborgs
Shifting Subjects
Net Effect
Gaping
Marjaana Virta's collection Mediatext for Marimekko
is based on the visual design she created for Imagologies. Some of the products have become Marimekko classics.