I found Marshall McLuhan's article The Medium is the Message very thought provoking and somewhat radical. I have always regarded the medium of a message important, but never to the extent that McLuhan promotes. In practicing communication throughout my life, I have always taken into account the medium of the message I am sending, however I never thought that over a period of time the medium is in fact more or as important as the message. The first interesting idea I gleaned from McLuhan was the lightbulb example. He states that a lightbulb has no message or content at all, but the medium is so profound that it can change society. Although the lightbulb is not delivering a message with text or voice, the medium has the power to enable people to bring light where there is darkness and ultimately offer a huge social change.
The next thing that really jumped out at me during this reading was the analogy of a burglar with a piece of meat. McLuhan compares the message to a chunk of meat, the burglar is the medium, and society is the dog. Instead of noticing the burglar in our house we only see the meat, and are blinded to everything else. McLuhan says that as a society we ignore the medium too often, which can be dangerous. McLuhan argues that over a period of time, the medium in which we receive our messages can shift society down a dangerous path. After reading this article is has become more apparent to me that the medium through which we receive our messages does say a lot about society that we rarely think about.
AG,
ReplyDeleteI also thought that The Medium is the Message was an interesting, but radical read. He made some good points throughout the article, but like you, he really made me think about how I personally look at communicating and how I often overlook the medium and focus too much on the content. I really like the electric light example and you made some good points regarding this topic. I really enjoyed how you stated that " the medium has the power to enable people to bring light where there is darkness and ultimately offer a huge social change." Although I had to reread the electric light example a few times, I feel that we have interpreted it fairly similar. I also liked how he talked about the burglar as the medium, and society as the dog. His examples were all creative and really supported what he had to say. Nice post.