Category: Leon Eckert

In Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium Is the Message,” he claims that the only aspect of a given medium that affects its audience is the medium itself rather than its content. McLuhan regards media as “extensions of man,” especially technologies. In other words, the way we communicate matters more than what is being communicated.

As such, I do not necessarily agree with McLuhan’s claims that the technology itself holds more meaning than its content. This seems to only hold true for the technologies he has cited such as the airplane or railways, but for media such as literature, art, and films, the content, more often than not, matters more than the medium. If the medium only mattered for these types of media, then there would not be such a wide library of novels, of art pieces, or of movies. 

However, it is interesting to note that McLuhan regards new innovations with unfamiliarity and fear, a he writes, “We are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than than the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy” (157).  Here, McLuhan describes the initial fear that comes with new technologies and how they function as extensions of ourselves.

“The Medium is the Message” written by Marshall McLuhan illustrates the idea that the message is something that’s content is recognized by its audience in order to communicate information. It is this message of any medium (or technology) that changes the pattern it introduces into human affairs. He gives the example of a railway in which not only improves our transportation of course, but also led to the creation of accessing more cities and gave us more leisure. I found his description of “content” using the electric light very interesting in which he explains how when performing surgery or during a nighttime baseball game, electric light is essential or else you couldn’t perform these things without it. This content is what therefore shapes our actions and human association, as we are shaped by the technology we use.

Machinery and technology are so central and superficial in its involvement with human relationships that it now affects our sight, sound, and even written perception of things without us even realizing it. As McLuhan puts it, we are “numb in our new electric world.” His text forces us to look into how technology has affected our own lives. I’ve noticed personally that without my phone or computer, I almost feel incomplete. So many aspects of my life now revolve around technology (School, email, social media, etc), these “mediums” change my perception of the world and change my communication. While this all has great benefits and advantages, it also can give false illusions (like beauty stereotypes) and even disconnect people from reality.

This is a photoshop work I made with the following three pictures.

I warp the perspective of the fountain picture and use the stamp tool to remove the logo on the corner.

Then I use the magnetic lasso tool to carve out the keyboard of the piano picture I took.

Then I insert the area I carved into the fountain picture and adjust the perspective and color curve for the keyboard, then I overlay the keyboard to the fountain.

Finally, I carve out the pianist from the third picture and transform the direction to make him sit on the keyboard.

I use the blur tool to blur out the edges and use the burn tool to add some shadows on the fountain and the keyboard under where the pianist sits. 

In The Medium Is the Message, Marshall McLuhan considers that the form of transporting content matters more than what the content is. I think what he inspects is a trend that reveals as time goes on. In ancient times, people communicate through talking. At that time the form of conveying content is audio, and audio only. Then characters were invented and people could write letters, the form would be both audio and visual. With the increase in forms comes the wider range for the content to spread. Letters, for example, travel over sea, far more than what oral communication does. Then in the age of Marshall McLuhan, telephone was invented, a faster way to spread information ton people. Also, television, a form that spread information to a wider range of audience. Rapidly-developed medium is the reason why a message can reach more people.

I think Marshall McLuhan is a visionary. At his time there wasn’t world wide web or social media, yet he came up with that theory, which works even better with today’s technology. The internet is an advanced version for television, the internet allows you to get access to any content you want at any time. Social media is another step forward for media. Take Twitter as an example, it has become the main news source for most people now than any other news channels. Tweets are updated real-time. But it brings concerns. Even when the original tweet is deleted, the content is not wiped from the internet, It will always be there, that is the negative effect brought by this new form of medium. An idea Marshall McLuhan brings up in his article is “the products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines its value”. It can be applied to our social media today, we need to use this efficient way of spreading information cautiously.