The Soft Edge is a one-of-a-kind history of the information revolution. In his lucid and direct style, Paul Levinson, historian and philosopher of media and communications, gives us more than just a history of information technologies. The Soft Edge is a book about theories on the evolution of technology, the effects that human choice has on this (r)evolution, and what's in store for us in the future.

Paul Levinson's engaging voice guides us on a tour that explains how communications media have been responsible for major developments in history and for profound...

Marshall McLuhan, whose insights about the impact of media have been compared in importance to the work of Darwin, Einstein, and Freud, died at the doorstep of the digital age in 1980. Paul Levinson - author of The Soft Edge - delves into the lessons McLuhan holds for the new millennium. This text highlights and explains the prophetic nature of McLuhan's theories. Levinson shows us why and how the Wired generation is now turning to McLuhan's work to better understand a global village in a digital age. We see how the Internet, in which every computer is a centre for producing as well as...

The Soft Edge is a one-of-a-kind history of the information revolution. In his lucid and direct style, Paul Levinson, historian and philosopher of media and communications, gives us more than just a history of information technologies. The Soft Edge is a book about theories on the evolution of technology, the effects that human choice has on this (r)evolution, and what's in store for us in the future.
Boldly extending and deepening the pathways blazed by McLuhan, Paul Levinson has provided us with a brilliant and exciting study of life with our old media, our new media,...

Marshall McLuhan died on the last day of 1980, on the doorstep of the personal computer revolution. Yet McLuhan's ideas anticipated a world of media in motion, and its impact on our lives on the dawn of the new millennium.
Paul Levinson examines why McLuhan's theories about media are more important to us today than when they were first written, and why the Wired generation is now turning to McLuhan's work to understand the global village in the digital age.

Is the experience of childbirth becoming globalized? Is the encroachment of the western medical model dehumanizing a profoundly human experience? If so, what can midwives and midwife educators do about it? These are the questions at the heart of this text which highlights the role that globalization plays in changing childbirth practices and its implications for midwifery practice and education.

Cyberspace takes us to any part of the planet we want to visit. But as Paul Levinson shows in this volume, when it comes to essential aspects of life we prefer to take our bodies with us. Whether it's trains, planes, scooters of pogo sticks, we want to really move through our world. Is planet earth the end of the line, or is space itself the next stop? In an inquiry that ranges from robots to religion, Paul Levinson asks why there is a deep-seated human desire to know what's out there. Full of examples, Realspace asks some searching questions about space and the way we think about it. Why,...

Acclaimed media theorist and award-winning science-fiction writer Paul Levinson here brings his dual talents to bear on probing the hurtling information revolution, and the way it is transforming our lives.

Computers as judges, books programmed to appeal to literally everyone's personal tastes, the civil rights of robots, the extinction of extinction via reclaimed DNA--these and many other cutting-edge themes are explored in the nine short stories and nine essays that comprise this extraordinary collection.

In addition to writings that first appeared in publications ranging from...

Is planet earth the end of the line, or is space itself the next stop?
Cyberspace. It's incredible, taking us to any part of the planet we want to visit. But as Paul Levinson shows in his brilliant new book, when it comes to transport, we're still stuck in the past, preferring to take our bodies with us. Whether it's trains, yachts, scooters or pogo-sticks, we're compelled to keep moving, our movements curtailed only by the earth itself. In our imaginations however, we soar way past the limits of current technology.
With a lucid but reflective style that takes in everything from robots...

Military advantage, scientific knowledge, and commerce have thus far been the main motives to human exploration of outer space. Touching the Face of the Cosmos explores what may be the best motive of all, largely untapped: the desire of every human being, essentially spiritual, to understand more about our place in the universe, how our lives on Earth are inextricably part of that bigger picture. Drawing on leading scientists, religious thinkers, and science fiction writers--including a new interview with John Glenn, and an essay by Director of the Vatican Observatory Guy...

Military advantage, scientific knowledge, and commerce have thus far been the main motives to human exploration of outer space. Touching the Face of the Cosmos explores what may be the best motive of all, largely untapped: the desire of every human being, essentially spiritual, to understand more about our place in the universe, how our lives on Earth are inextricably part of that bigger picture. Drawing on leading scientists, religious thinkers, and science fiction writers--including a new interview with John Glenn, and an essay by Director of the Vatican Observatory Guy...