New Humans in the Making
Derrick de Kerckhove's The Skin of Culture
Vic Froese
October 1, 1996
The Skin of Culture: Investigating the New Electronic Reality by Derrick de Kerckhove, edited by Christopher Dewdney (Toronto: Somerville House Publishing, 1995), 226 pp., $19.95 (Canadian), paper. "The future isn't what it used to be, " writes Derrick de Kerckhove. It now looks like this: Teleconferencing will be almost as common as a phone call is today. National boundaries will become pointless as the culture of multinationals becomes the global culture itself. Anarchy will menace the future as the control of information becomes impossible. Psychographics will replace demographics in the targeting of markets. Consumers will become "prosumers," partners with manufacturers in developing the products they buy. Virtual reality technologies will transfigure education, therapy, product design, and entertainment (the pornographic variety not least of all). These and other predictions litter the pages of The Skin of Culture. Though not a household name, de Kerckhove is not new to technology and media analysis. He worked for ten years with the renowned media philosopher, Marshall ("the medium is the message") McLuhan, as translator, assistant, and occasional coauthor. Presently director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology (http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/mcluhan/) at the University of Toronto, he is much in demand as a conference speaker and consultant. His editing projects include Understanding 1984 (1984), McLuhan e la metamorfosi dell'uomo (1984), and The Alphabet and the Brain (1988). In 1991 he published Brainframes: Technology, Mind and Business, in which he dealt with the differences between the effects of television, computers, and hypermedia on corporate culture, business practices, and economic markets. The Skin ...
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