The Medium is the Message - Marshall McLuhan

The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan

At first it sounds strange that the medium is the message. This is what it means to me: "Whether you 

broadcast something on TV or screen in a projection theater is more important than what is playing on 

that screen." Sure, new delivery methods change the way we interact (iphone you can play YouTube 

clips to people in a parking lot, while TV or Theater is less passive) but who cares about the technology or dimensions of the screen? It's what's in that magic box that's making me laugh.  

But... judging from how I was forced to throw in the towel on the last post, I'm not sure that McLuhan's 

argument is so simplistic. What I think McLuhan is really getting at is a deeper human order/interaction as a result of the medium. It's easier to understand when you broaden the use of the word medium 

beyond its commonly understood limits. Here, McLuhan uses the examples of the railway and the airplane as a media. He states:

" 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, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure.  This happened whether the railway functioned in a tropical or northern environment, and is quite independent of the freight or content of the railway medium.  The airplane on the other hand tends to dissolve the railway form of city, politics, and association, quite independently of what the airplane is used for.     

But what about other objects besides the TV and transport vehicles which have no "content"?  Like for instance the electric light.  Now first I'll say that this example of an electric light as media seems completely alien.  It can be used as a means for communicating (signal communication, LED matrices) but they also, "...eliminate time and space factors in human association exactly as do radio, telegraph, telephone, and TV, creating involvement in depth."

So before I start to question what functionality has to do with its message and medium, I'll just try this out: A medium can be anything that affects human interaction, and serves as the pivotal point which buttresses activity back and forth.