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THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

Marshall McLuhan

I. INTRODUCTION
§ Video presentation of "Marshall McLuhan - Digital Prophecies: The Medium is the
Message" (Al Jazeera English, 2017).

II. DEFINING THE "MEDIUM"

§ According to McLuhan (2006), throughout history, what has been communicated has
been less important than the medium through which they communicated.
§ McLuhan (2006) defines the medium as "any extension of ourselves or our senses" and
that "each medium enables us to do more than our bodies could do on their own" (108).
§ As a case in point, the medium of language extends our thoughts from within our mind
out to others.
§ In his work, McLuhan (2006) highlighted the various means in which machines
reoriented human relations on both intra- and interpersonal levels rather than focusing on
what these technologies were made to produce (108).
§ He uses the electric light analogy and describes the light as pure information, that being a
medium with no message (108).
§ Furthermore, McLuhan (2006) claims that the electric light, although not having any
message within it, makes it possible for us to see various spaces during the night and
would end up being fully consumed by the blackness of the dark with the absence
thereof.
§ He also argued that the content of any medium is another medium and discusses how the
content of writing is simply speech which is similar to how the content of print is any
kind of written output (108).

III. DEFINING THE "MESSAGE"

§ McLuhan (2006) defines the message as a "change of scale, pace, or pattern" that an
innovation, development, or innovation introduces to human life and affairs (109).
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§ The aforementioned notion does not particularly pertain to the use or content of
innovation, but instead focuses on the change in interpersonal dynamics brought about by
the innovation.
§ In McLuhan’s (2006) technological examples, the railway did not introduce movement,
transportation, wheels, or roads into human society, but it propelled and widened the
scale of existing human activities, creating novel forms of cities and new kinds of work
and leisure (109).
§ In a media aspect, the message of a newscast is not the news stories themselves, but a
change in the public attitude to a particular news topic or the creation of a climate of fear
as a result of the news.
§ Furthermore, the message that theatrical productions seek to convey is not simply the
play being produced, but more on the change and developments in tourism that the
production may yield as a result.
§ McLuhan (2006) stresses on the need to “look beyond the obvious and seek the non-
obvious changes or effects.”

IV. WHAT "THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE" MEANS

§ The central theory of McLuhan's (2006) thesis is that the medium in which content is
carried plays an essential role on how it is perceived.
§ We may determine the traits and actual nature of whatever one creates or conceives by
virtue of the changes that comes about as a result thereafter.
§ McLuhan (2006) cites activities in which light is of the essence such as brain surgery or
night baseball can be deemed as the actual content of the electric light as they could not
exist in its absence (109).
§ Much like the electric light has no actual content, it is still deemed to be a communication
medium.
§ McLuhan (2006) sends out a warning that we tend to be distracted by the content of a
medium which is often another distinct medium per se.
§ He adds that “it is only too typical that the content of any medium can blind us to the
actual character of the medium" (109).
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§ McLuhan (2006) stresses the differences in the two concepts by saying that the content of
the medium is a message that can simply be understood, whereas the character of the
medium is another message which can simply be missed out.
§ Simply put, he implies that the character of the medium pertains to its potency or effect,
which is, in turn, the message (114).

V. CUBISM AS A REPRESENTATIVE IDEA TO MCLUHAN'S THESIS

§ According to McLuhan (2006), Cubist art demands for “instant sensory awareness of an
entirety apart from mere perspective” (111).
§ Simply put, in the idea of Cubism vis-à-vis McLuhan’s thesis, one could not ask what the
artwork was about (content) but consider it in its entirety instead.
§ For exceptionally mechanized and literate cultures, the art of film and movies appeared as
a Utopian world of lux and dreams that money can buy.
§ This realization sparked the profound influence of motion pictures to Cubism and was
described by English art historian Ernest Hans Gombrich (“Art and Illusion”) as “the
most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture –
that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas” (110).
§ Cubism replaces all existing facets of an object simultaneously for the “point of view” or
facet of perspective illusion (110).
§ Rather than the specialized illusion of the third dimension on canvas, cubism creates a
concession of planes, as well as conflicting patterns, lights, textures that sends the
message across by involvement (110-111).
§ Cubism, as it provides the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back, and front and the
rest, in two dimensions, rejects the illusion of perspectives for the instant sensory
awareness of the complete picture (111).
§ It is now being implied that the message was the content per se as people would tend to
ask what a painting or a film was about but never crossed in their minds to ask about the
smallest of details and intricacies in these works.
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VI. EXEMPLIFICATIONS OF MCLUHAN'S THESIS IN MEDIA AND SOCIETY

§ McLuhan (2006) describes the content of a medium as a “juicy piece of meat carried by
the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind” (114).
§ This implies how people have the tendency to focus on the obvious, which is the content,
to give us valuable information, but in this process, we greatly miss out on the structural
changes in our daily activities that are introduced subtly, or for long periods of time
(114).
§ As societal values, norms, and ways of doing things change due to technology, it is when
we recognize on the social implications of a particular medium (114).
§ These encompass cultural or religious issues and historical precedents, by interplay with
pre-existing conditions, to its secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions that
we may not be completely aware of (114).
§ According to McLuhan (2006), “this is merely that the personal and social consequences
of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is
introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology”
(107).
§ Nowadays, our smartphones have dramatically reshaped not only our communication
abilities but have drastically changed our means of communication, as well as our mode
of sharing and imparting new knowledge.
§ Sadly, in this process, we have slowly stopped writing with our own hands, forgotten
how to spell without autocorrect features, and lost our capacity to retrieve and memorize
all sorts of information.
§ According to McLuhan (2016), the medium per se controlled and shaped the “scale and
form of human association and action" (108).
§ Like in the movies, he insisted that this medium played with the notions of speed and
time and transformed "the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative
configuration and structure".
§ With that said, the message of the movie medium is how it bridges "lineal connections"
to "configurations" (110).
§ Although both television and print media undeniably have significant impacts on our
societies and played vital roles in its transformation, the content is very much still in this
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picture and must be treated on a high regard since it was the content of these mediums
that influenced its social contexts and how people experience them today.
§ Print media, although impacts our senses to be more naturally visual, also affects our
society in its message.
§ Biased newspapers, editorial columns and intriguing articles reframe our ways of
thinking that greatly differs elsewhere given the content of print media in each location
and how it is made varies from one place to another.
§ Similarly, the social context that television provides is still significantly influenced by the
type of programming that people are subjected to consume and affects how they live their
everyday lives.
§ Social media is deemed as a message per se as the Internet serves as the “medium” that
supports McLuhan’s (2016) thesis.
§ However, it is the social media and Internet contents, at large, that makes both prominent
enough to be societally impactful. More so, it is the continuous use of the Internet to
provide easier access to information that makes it successful in being an extension of our
physical and nervous selves.
§ If one were to argue that the Internet is made up of nothing but pornography and other
malicious content, it would by no means equate to the same impact on our society like it
already has from its rise.

VII. CONCLUSION
§ A very notable consideration in McLuhan’s (2006) thesis was that they were drawn
roughly 40 years ago, in 1967, way before the advent of the Internet and social media as
we know it today.
§ His prediction of an international, interconnected, interactive global village has come to
fruition.
§ "The medium is the message" sends us a reminder that being mindful of change in our
societal and cultural states and contexts corresponds to the presence of a new message,
that is, the effects of a new medium.
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§ As McLuhan (2006) states, this warning tells us to characterize and identify the new
medium before it becomes evident enough for the people - a process that would likely
take years or even decades to fully complete.
§ If we discover that the new medium brings along effects that might be detrimental to our
society or culture, we can influence the development and evolution of the innovation
before the effects becomes pervasive.
§ McLuhan (2006) concludes that "control over change would seem to consist in moving
not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force."
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REFERENCES
Al Jazeera English. (2017). Marshall McLuhan - Digital Prophecies: The Medium is the
Message [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ML9n5f1fE

Eudaimonia. (2016). The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan. Retrieved from
https://medium.com/@obtaineudaimonia/the-medium-is-the-message-by-marshall-
mcluhan-8b5d0a9d426b

Federman, M. (n.d.). What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message? Retrieved from
https://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm

McLuhan, M. (2016). The Medium Is The Message. (M. Durham & D. Kellner, Eds.). Media
and Cultural Studies Keyworks, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 107-116.

Norman, J. (2009). Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message". Retrieved from
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=2391

Olson, D. [Folding Ideas]. (2015). Minisode - The Medium is the Message [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OseOb_wBsi4

Sadmanr. (2016). "The medium is the message?" Retrieved from

https://mediatheoryart.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/the-medium-is-the-message/