In “The Medium Is the Message”, McLuhan attempts to convey his viewpoints on how mediums affect the way a message is communicated. Throughout the article, McLuhan voices his concern over how people often tend to focus on obvious effects that we miss out on the structural changes that happen slowly and gradually over time. In the case of new inventions, people have a good general idea of its intended use, how to use it and its advantages and disadvantages. However, when looking back, we realise there are a number of unintended consequences that we were entirely unaware of. Moreover, a lot of these consequences are caused by the lack of planning and consideration.
The medium, on the other hand, is something where change occurs. Hence, since some sort of change will inevitably happen from every invention and everything we create, he is able to coin the term “the medium is the message”. We are often preoccupied with the medium’s (the new invention or thing we create) content that we don’t realise the other intended consequences.
From this article, it is clear that McLuhan preaches the importance of noticing the change in our culture and society within the effects of the new medium. In doing so, we will then be able to foresee or predict the possible detrimental effects in our society before it happens. Once this is able to happen, we are also then able to influence its development of the new innovation before it becomes destructive.