Week 2: Response to “The Medium is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan – Susie

       “The Medium is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan points out a new theory of the medium. The meaningful and useful things are not information and content on the medium but the medium itself. The medium changes people’s relationships with others and people’s living pattern. He takes electric light as an example. Although the electric does not convey the information like the newspaper, it does change people’s life. It is not a communication medium since it doesn’t convey the information, but it is still a medium. So McLuhan understands in a broader aspect. Therefore, the most important “content” is no the content conveyed by the medium but the influence on people’s life that the medium forms and controls.

       Nowadays, we can also find the improvement and development of medium changes the different generation’s life. For example, Weibo is very popular in China. It is a medium that brings a large sum of information and message together. On Weibo, people can post video, audio, and articles on it. So people pay more attention to the content. If the things you upload on the internet are attractive enough, you will be followed whoever you are. So as Twitter and Facebook, people nowadays are living in a new life which is quite different from the generation using Blog. Therefore, Weibo is an important medium, which is the message.

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