The Medium Is The Message - Response

The article “The Medium Is The Message” by Marshall McLuhan was a difficult one to interpret. McLuhan was presenting the idea that the medium that some kind of media or consumable content is presented on gives the real message instead of that content itself. Society takes its learning of a message by the medium that it encompasses, whether it is with photographs, newspapers, or today’s online sources.

The example that stood out to me was the medium of motion picture, which he briefly but concisely talked about as having the message of “transition from lineal connections to configurations” (205). Movies brought storytelling from a mechanical, sequential process to a structured, creative one and allowed for more illustrative imagining in media, and I can see how the medium is the message when a movie’s elements come together and give reasoning for the medium and its characteristics. Had technology not advanced the way it did, the kind of spectacle we see in Hollywood films would not be a reality, and there would not be the kind of audiovisual immersion we have today.

He also uses history to bring his points across, citing Napoleon and Shakespeare when comparing mediums and determining which ones had a greater impact in delivering a message, and it had me thinking about how we consume media today. When you look at news, for example, I tend to place more trust in content through television for local and national news, but I trust online sources more for breaking and social news. It is the nature of a site like Twitter to have bleeding-edge commentary and updates about something, while the site’s interactivity amongst users lets that information flow in a rapid, social manner. The medium is responsible for that, and the content would not be what it is without the means provided by the medium to carry that content. As McLuhan put it, “the ‘content’ of any medium blinds us to the character of that medium” (203).

One story came up related to mediums that I was just reminded of, dealing with the medium of radio. Radio airplay is on the decline thanks to the mainstream success of the iPod and other personal, portable media players, as well as the smartphone marketplace. Children growing up today are exposed to different mediums than we were exposed to as children, and this was evident when I heard my friend’s little sister in the back of the car ask how the radio worked. She wanted to know why there a person talking, why the music playing was not in her control, and why the music had to stop for commercials. These are all aspects of the medium of radio, when all she had known was the workings of an iPod touch that lets you play and control any music you own, without advertisements or unwanted chatter. The structure of radio stations meant that an MC or DJ controlled the music you hear, advertisers plugged their products or services in order for the station to make money, and sound quality was dependent on the distance from broadcast towers. iPods and smartphones with sophisticated music players are second-nature to many of us now, but the change in technology that made it possible was what McLuhan was telling us not to forget about. The influence that music gives us is different when heard on the radio versus on a personal media player, because the mediums have changed, and as long as we have that medium as the message moving forward, technologies like our audio and communication devices will grow into something new with an even larger message.