When reading McCluhan's
chapter, "The Medium is the Message" I found myself getting very confused
and often times a little flustered when trying to wrap my head around this
concept that, the medium is the message. The phrase itself has a much deeper
meaning, McCluhan argues that the form of the medium we chose to use to
communicate with has a hidden meaning than the message itself. Meaning, however
we chose to deliver content is more essential than the actual content. McCluhan
made another interesting argument in chapter one, discussing that the medium
can be considered the message if the content that the medium holds would be
impossible to access without the medium. McCluhan fears that we as a society
are not looking at the “bigger picture” instead we are so wrapped up in the
actual medium rather than expanding our thoughts. He claims that we need to spend
time understanding what the invention does and we will then have a greater
understanding for the medium.
McCluhan uses the light bulb, railway system and the
telegraph as examples to defend his argument. He discusses the railway system
and how it changed our world in ways that many people don’t think of. Of course
it made transportation, and traveling more convenient, but it also changed it
in other ways. “The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or
wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of
previous human functions”. This is an interesting point McCluhan makes and when
reading this I thought about many other inventions and mediums we have in
todays world, but more about what else they have done. For example the computer
and the internet. The internet has opened endless doors of a plethora of
information and has shaped our world today. However, without a computer the internet
may as well be useless. Of course today we have infinite ways to access the internet,
but before smartphones and iPad’s came out we relied on the computer as our
medium. I think McCluhan is trying to get us to look at these technologies in a
different way, sending emails and text messages is great, but it is impossible
to do without the medium, which is why to say the medium is the message is not
a false argument.
