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.