The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan’s piece, The Medium is the Message, takes on a paradoxical view of media. He brings up the idea that the essence of a message is based on the medium that it is conveyed through. He makes the claim that the medium in itself has an automatic message embedded into it. The medium, at times, can be even more important than the content of the message itself. McLuhan uses many different sources to display his point including references from history, literature, and engineering.

Though McLuhan’s work was published before most modern technological advancements were made, many of his ideas still hold true to the new generation. His claims are even stronger and more applicable to new technology including the internet and smart phones. McLuhan relates the transition between different mediums to the mediums used in laws and governments. At one point, England rejected the idea of print communication and held on to oral and traditional laws. It was this difference in medium that made Matthew Arnold classify the English as a “barbarian” (6). This idea can be related to modern technology. As soon as the internet was invented, it boomed in popularity. After a very short period of time, in America, people without the internet were considered outsiders. Now, there are many new aspects of life that are only able to be completed with the use of the internet. Smart phones had a similar effect on society. As soon as smart phones became wildly popular, people with regular cell phones could not complete many aspects of life that people with smart phones could. It has even become difficult to find a regular cell phone to buy. Smart phones are the most prevalent example that display McLuhan’s point of the medium is the message. Smart phones have altered the way that people think and act. As new apps are invented and popularized, people change the way that they perceive news, events, and social situations. Smart phones give us the ability to have a constant stream of every piece of information. They can also trigger a person’s brain with tempting distractions and pop-ups. This has lead humans to have shorter attention spans. The distractions that we are fed by the internet keep us glued to technology, giving people social anxiety.

Marshall McLuhan is innovative to think about technology in this light. He has made a claim about technology and media that has carried over to modern times and may become timeless. His argument stands today and even though technology is ever-evolving, I believe that his argument will always stand strong.