Tutorial 3 10-12

Welcome to Week III of the wonderful NCT blog!


Today’s Tutorial Task requires the class to search the library databases for resources that will help us with our essay topic. I haven’t fully decided on what my essay topic will be on but I did think that Marshall McLuhan’s work is interesting and important to this course, so he might be an intriguing topic for my essay.

The first part of this Tutorial task for this week is to find a resource on my topic that will help me ‘formulate’ my essay. The one that popped up first in my search was the book, strangely titled Marshall McLuhan by Jonathan Miller (sarcastic, as if you couldn’t tell).

The next part of this task was to find 3 academic articles related to my topic and summarise the key points. The first one was quite easy as it was one of the records in my first search entitled Marshall McLuhan: Cosmic Resource by J. Marchessault it focuses on McLuhan’s life and putting his theories into a global context. I used the database JSTOR: the scholarly journal archive for the next 2 articles. The second article I looked at was entitled McLuhan In The Light Of Classical Rhetoric by Patrick Mahony which talked about the influence of Rhetoric on McLuhan’s work. And the last article I’m using for this task is entitled The McLuhan Thesis: Its Limits And Appeals by Edward Lueders which was written in 1967 during McLuhan’s time and talks of theories and compares him to great theorists.

I have also been asked to give a brief summary of what my essay will be about. Some points of thinking of at the moment are His concepts/theories, His theories in context of today, His impact on media theory & Criticisms.

Another task was the joining of a mailing list that was related to media or technology. I found one called fibreculture.org which has forums, reviews, projects, events & a journal on information technology & new media.

I believe I’m over my Wordcount now, so for this week,
Cheerio