Week 2: “The Medium is the Message” Reading Response – Grace Currier

The underlying message in Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” is that the medium through which a thought, idea, opinion, or belief is viewed directly impacts how one might react or behave. A message conveyed through different forms of media may yield different reactions based on its audience.  He delves very deep into the idea that with the emergence of modern technology, our reactions are no longer black and white, but vary across a spectrum depending on the medium. Prior to the ‘electric age’, many only considered the content of the medium rather than the medium itself. However, now it is much more easier understood that the medium is in fact, the message. He states that “people retained some sense of the whole pattern, of form and function as a unity.” Form and function are in fact, one cohesive unit, as one without the other is incomplete and ineffective in conveying a particular message.