The Medium Is The Message Mcluhan

In the book The Medium Is the Message Marshall McLuhan explains that though the medium is responsible for delivering the message to the audience, he argues that the medium acquires equal or more value than the message itself. Furthermore, the medium, through which the message of content is presented, holds accountability to the way the message is perceived. McLuhan makes it clear that the ‘message’ of his article is that man fails to notice that technologies (mediums) will have effects on culture and society. I agree with McLuhan that the medium used to display the message has an equal or higher importance than the message itself, and that technologies most definitely effect culture. I will be further supporting my claim with Tom Wolfe’s Electric
He goes further into this statement with the example of the railroad and how though it was invented for transportation, it did not develop the concept of transportation. In his example transportation is the ‘message’ and the invention of railroad is the ‘medium’ because the railroad communicates the idea of transportation. The railroad was not a completely new invention or created the concept of transportation, rather it was an extension of the previous ways of transportation. Though the railroad is the medium, it is clearly more important than the message. The medium is more valuable than the message because it devised a way for that transportation to effect the entirety of the environment surrounding it; while the message is basically just an idea that railroads are a new stem of transportation. Furthermore, with the medium of railroads came additional mediums that would extend and affect categories in society like work or leisure, but overall influenced life-styles. The overall idea of the railroad changes interactions but the medium changes the fundamental scale of those interactions. For example, the train, car, and airplane restructured the idea of what cities look like and where they can be built. The ‘electric technology’ like televisions and radios restructured the way man/woman divides his/her time and the
The message technologies create allow for a new stage of interaction and connection with other people; though we do not realize the effects that it will have on culture till they occur. The effect of the medium becomes the blue print and builds integration to society. These affects that go by us unknowingly are McLuhan’s message. Throughout history what has been communicated has been less important than that of the particular medium which people communicated through. For instance, oral cultures changing to print based. Printed word encouraged emphasis on visual senses in order to read. And in the oral culture speech was everything and the dominant sense of that era was the ear. The technology that transfers the message changes the culture of society because it effects the areas of individual, family, work, and leisure. As mentioned before, the electric light brought innovation. But it also brought a difference in the way man interacted with day and night. Light changed the culture dramatically by enabling societies to have the 24/7 culture we still have present day. It effected the way we work, leisure, travel, influenced production, and economy greatly. It certainly provided night-life and in today’s world much of the innovations used today are powered by electricity, and rather than electricity being just an innovation it is now implanted most definitely in society and everyday