The Medium IS the Message: Blog #1

After reading Marshall Mcluhan’s The Medium is the Message I find I’ve completely changed my opinion on how a medium effects its content.

Content is defined as:
“2. something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing, or any of various arts: a poetic form adequate to a poetic content.” You can look it up yourself at Dictionary.com or go to the page Here.

Content is a fairly easily understood concept. It can be applied to older technologies such as speech, print, and film as equally as it can be applied to the newer technologies of Flash movies, blogging, and websites in general. Since the content itself is static, the medium becomes the variable agent.

Medium is defined as:
“6. an intervening agency, means, or instrument by which something is conveyed or accomplished: Words are a medium of expression.

7. one of the means or channels of general communication, information, or entertainment in society, as newspapers, radio, or television.”
You can look it up yourself at Dictionary.com or go to the page Here.

The first definition of the word medium is how I have understood medium in the past. However, the second definition fits more snugly into McLuhan’s definition of medium since it relates directly to human communication and interaction via the vehicle of technology. It is easy to imagine the difference between a written play, an acted play, and a film play. The written play requires pure imagination, the theatrical play relies heavily upon a human being’s speech abilities as well as the set, and the same play produced in film may use certain special effects not available to the previous two mediums simply because of the level of technology. This illustrates the major impact the medium has upon its content.

With medium’s ability to change its message, we must begin to focus on how important media is becoming in the world today. McLuhan discusses technology as neither positive nor negative in its uses, but positive or negative from one type of technology to another. This is the difference between a bomb and a book. I am fully capable of writing a book that is anti-abortion in its message, however I am also capable of bombing an abortion clinic to get my message across. Obviously it is the technology that provides either a positive or negative effect on how the rest of humanity will receive this message. Thus, the medium becomes the message.