Tachyon Publications says “Mass media is changing more rapidly now than ever before. If Marshall McCluhan is right and the medium is the message, what are we to make of the Web, social media, and smart phones—and what are they making us and our world into?”
Editor Rick Wilber tries to answer that question with the anthology Future Media, which Tachyon is releasing in July. “Future Media collects extraordinary fiction and nonfiction from the best and the brightest visionaries of the future. Combining their prescient works, Future Media is an exploration of mass media, personal and public, pervasive and powerful. Optimistic as much as cautionary, this groundbreaking anthology challenges and engages readers with glimpses of a future that will not be ignored.”
The table of contents is:
Preface: “Thoughts of a Mediated Future” by Rick Wilber
Introduction by Paul Levinson
Excerpt from Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message”
“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr
“New Brains for Old” by James Patrick Kelly
Excerpt from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
“Centigrade 233” by Gregory Benford
Excerpt from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
“Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip (A Play in the Form of a Feelie Script)” by Joe Haldeman
Introduction to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death by Andrew Postman
“At Central” by Kit Reed
Excerpt from Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
“The Prize of Peril” by Robert Sheckley
“Sex, Death and Machinery” by Allucquére Rosanne Stone
“Baby, You Were Great” by Kate Wilhelm
“Rock On” by Pat Cadigan
“Feel the Zaz” by James Patrick Kelly
“Dude, We’re Gonna Be Jedi” by Henry Jenkins
“From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience” by Judy Wacjman
“The Girl Who Was Plugged In” by James Tiptree, Jr.
“Tech-Illa Sunrise” by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Guillermo Gómez-Peña
“As We May Think” by Vannevar Bush
“Download for Free” by Cory Doctorow
Excerpt from Makers by Cory Doctorow
“The Future of the Web” by Timothy Berners-Lee
Excerpt from Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan: “Automation”