Intellect

In this timely and highly original merging of theory and practice, conflict photographer and critical theorist Rita Leistner applies Marshall McLuhan’s semiotic theories of language, media and technology to iPhone photographs taken during a military embed in Afghanistan. Leistner was embedded for three weeks with the United States Marine Corps. When she returned to Canada in March 2011 she had an iPhone full of photographs and a preoccupation with the on-going chaos in Afghanistan. She was particularly concerned with the inability of American and International Security Forces (ISAF), including Canada, to do much about it, despite having an astounding battery of technology at their fingertips. This volume applies McLuhan’s theories in an original context to original material. In an entertaining and accessible application of McLuhan’s work, through a series of what Leistner calls iProbes—a portmanteau of iPhone and probe— the author reveals the face of war through the extensions of man.