Marshal McLuhan makes the bold claim that, rather than the content of the media being the only message, the nature of the medium itself is inherent to the meaning. I must admit I had a hard time making sense of his argument at first, but it became clearer to me when he framed it as the following: “A message, it seemed, was the content as people used to ask what a painting is about. Yet they never thought to ask what a melody was about, or a house or a dress.” This illustrated to me that we assume an intention in every item we encounter. A dress or house we assume the intention of functionality and to some extent aesthetics, however we don’t normally look for life advice or political discourse in these items. In some media, however, we assume the medium itself to be only a vessel of a deeper message– one where we do look for life advice or political discourse — and we disregard the active role that the medium plays in shaping our life individually and that of society. That being said, McLuhan goes on to argue that the medium cannot be excused from the havoc it wreaks. Contrary to Sarnoff’s statement (and a widely shared sentiment) it does not suffice to call a medium “neither good nor bad” because the medium does influence and enable the way in which it is used. This part of McLuhan’s argument is less persuasive to me because I fail to see any advantage in condemning every item that could theoretically be used for bad purposes. There are some items that are necessarily labeled as dangerous and therefore controlled, however the majority of things must be allowed and we must trust the users’ intentions or we would be left with nothing.