This text focuses on how messages are produced in the various media, and shows how criticism changes when the medium of transmission is taken into account.

Media critics have long focused on the content and form of verbal and non-verbal communication, while for the most part neglecting what traditionally has been considered a technical issue - how messages are produced and formatted in the various media. This book shows how criticism changes when the medium of transmission is taken into account. The authors eschew the notion of communication technologies as neutral conduits, depicting them instead as active and creative determinants of meaning. Three specific technological cultures that historically have defined human communication are identified - the oral, the literate, and the electronic - and their structural features and social implications are examined. Highlighted throughout are ways that media criticism may serve as a basis for assessing, evaluating, and responding to the effects of communication technologies upon what we know and how we experience the world.

I. Introduction. A History of Human Communication. A
World of Communication Technologies and the Human Response.
II. The Critical Moment and the Critic's Method. The
Critical Process. III. Media Cultures. The Oral Cultures. The Literature Culture. The Electronic Culture. IV.
A Future Perspective. Analyzing Media Comparatively: Comparative Media Criticism and the Future of Media Criticism.
Glossary.