The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

 

Focus:

How does McLuhan’s understanding of both the medium and message affect educators as they implement ET into their curriculum? How is an understanding of the ‘medium’ fundamental to meaningful ET?

 

Prezi:     The Medium is the Message

 

Key Concepts and Terms:

‘The Medium is the Message’

–       a medium is “any extension of ourselves” (p.1) where one of our sense is extended in an artificial way.

• the wheel is considered an extension of the foot, clothing an extension of the skin and the book an extension of the eye

 

–       it is not so much the content of the medium that is important in understanding the significance of media, but rather  the nature of the medium itself.

• the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium
  • the content of writing is speech, written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph.
• what is said through these various media is of no concern, what matters is the implications of the new format.
  • the content of the media actually blinds us to the radically transformative character of the medium itself (p.2).
    • e.x. IBM is not in the business of making office equipment, but rather the business of processing information

 

–       the lightbulb has no content in the way that a newspaper or television does, yet it is a medium that does constitute a change (creation of light).

 

–       the development of new, digital forms of media have radically transformed humanity’s outlook and system of thought.

 

–       Cubism clearly ‘announces that the medium is the message’ (p.5),

• by showing multiple points of view (top, bottom, inside, outside, top, bottom, back, and front) in two dimensions, cubism eliminates perspective in favour of instant awareness of the whole.
• The message of painting used to be the content as people would ask what a painting was about (but not a house or dress – they retained the idea of the whole). Cubism forces people to consider it in its totality.

 

–       A key characteristic of this new world is the disintegration of time and space

• digital technology facilitates instant communication
• in the mechanical age events occured in sequence, in the digital era everything is instantaneous – we are no longer detached from the consequences

 

–       Since the world of mechanical media demanded ‘fragmentation and linearity’ (p.3), the unified, instantaneous digital world is causing the disintegration of key characteristics of Western society

• we are unable to grasp what is happening – like tribal societies confronting the technology of colonists, we are unable to comprehend the fundamental changes which are transforming us.
• Social institutions, particularly the education system, must be reorganized to adapt to these new characteristics of society.

 

–       For McLuhan then, we can know the nature and characteristics of anything we conceive or create (medium) by virtue of the changes – often unnoticed and non-obvious – that they effect (message) – Federman

 

YouTube Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw

 

Additional Resources:

Federman, M. (2004, July 23). What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message? Retrieved <DATE> from http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm .