For me, this article had hit my nerve thoroughly. When I first think of what does that mean by “the medium is the message”, I could hardly give it an explanation by intuition. Initially, I thought it would be a essay talking about message and technology, but actually doesn’t. While reading across the lines, I started questioning: does a really understand the message conveyed by various medium? In addition to the change in human association and activities brought up by these mediums, we need to consider the medium itself. Take computer for instance, when we think of it, we should not only think about the progress after inventing the computer, but also think of how to use it more efficiently through analyzing it. Using IBM as an example, McLuhan stated that once the company penetrated what their ultimate goal was, they could navigate with a clear vision (152).
There is also an expression he used that I found help me understand this whole passage better, which is: ” Instead of asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, it suddenly seemed that a chicken was an egg’s idea for getting more eggs (McLuhan 154).” From this we can see that instead of getting accustomed to certain fact, what we need to do is to see through the fact and make change of it. Just as the connection C.G Jung has made, we should not let ourselves be surrounded by “slaves” and influenced by them. The essence is to see the undermined message behind medium.