What did Marshall McLuhan mean by “The medium is the message?” I think the idea is clearer today than back in 1962 when he published his landmark book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. He argued that it was not the content within the media that affects us the most, whether the media be radio, TV, newspapers, or anything else.
Rather, it is the actual medium itself that changes us, that transforms our minds. To try to unpack this concept, just think about your average teenagers today with their smart phones. (Or yourself!) Is it mostly the content on that phone that influences them as they ceaselessly tap and slide their fingers across the screen? Are they really looking for the latest news? What’s more addictive — the content or the process? McLuhan would likely argue that it is the environment of the medium itself that has us transfixed. It is the technology that is transforming us.
Marshall McLuhan, 1945.
This is a also a theme in Nicholas Carr’s 2011 book The Shallows, in which he posits that the internet actually is changing how we think and even the very structure of our brains as we allow ourselves to get pulled into its clickholes that never seem to end. As an aside, I’ll add that is why it’s critical that we step back from communications media and re-learn how to connect with people one-on-one and face-to-face. The forces of these technologies have become way too powerful, as have the tech titans who are controlling social media.
It is the way in which we use a technology that causes it to become an “extension of man,” as McLuhan subtitle implies. Interestingly, he means that he sees technology as extensions of our bodies, extensions of our natural functions. For example, he has a chapter on clothing as a medium — an extension of our skin. And transportation such as cars and bicycles are media that are extensions of our feet. Those that affect our minds in terms of audio-visual media are, likewise, extensions of our central nervous systems. If you are interested in the development of language — and especially how the phonetic alphabet impacted human society — that’s another reason for extending your eyes to read this amazing book.
By the way, five years later (in 1967) McLuhan coined another phrase: The Medium is the Massage. This is the idea that a medium –whether TV, radio, the internet, a photograph — actually massages our senses and changes our perceptions in ways we don’t realize. So rather than the content of the message itself, it’s the medium — the presentation of the content, if you will — that affects us most. I tend to agree. And I think awareness of this point is key to building self-awareness today.
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