Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message was written around the year 1967, the piece itself discusses various topics and ideas surrounding the theory; such as, voice, writing, and “electric” media and how they affect individuals, perceptions, and society as a whole. McLuhan notes that “societies have been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication” (9). The text is partially a view against the printed word, with its ability to rationalize and linarite, through its emphasis of the visual at the very expense of the hearing and tangible, and also with its encouraging tactics towards people to set off and be individuals and abandon the companionship of their peers as opposed to the …show more content…
McLuhan’s irrelevance in the direction of the pre-packaged content, that of the traditional media, offers a fresh and alarming approach. It was viewed as something fresh due to the fact that no one ever really thought of a method of conveying information and treating it as anything more, while at the same time is was considered frightening, through its ability to affect and essentially alter an individual’s everyday life and perception of the world around them. Because of the idea that the medium tends to be viewed as the message, it results in distressing one’s ability to recognize the medium as a separate and powerful object. It forces one to ask the question of, what is considered a message? The message is anything and everything. The message becomes what the supervisors of the media want it to be. For McLuhan not all media can work and function in the same way, despite the fact that it may be used to originate the same conclusions.
“The ‘message of any medium or technology is the change of scale, pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs…For example the railway…accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human function , creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure”
Media, the plural form of medium, describes various ways in which we communicate in society. A phone call, email, radio, computer, news on TV, etc. are all forms of media. In our society today, the media plays a significantly large role in influencing society negatively, twisting one’s perspective of the truth. In author Brooke Gladstone’s, The Influencing Machine, she discusses how media is looked at as an “influencing machine,” that’s controlling the mind of its viewers. Throughout the reading, Gladstone guides her readers through perceptions of media and how it influences them to get readers to understand the truth about media and the manipulation behind it.
He asserts that with the invention of television, writing can basically be eliminated (125). There’s no use for it anymore, after all. What can be more engaging than a form of media that stimulates the senses so? Despite the beliefs of those who lived in the 60s and 70s, the twenty-first century is unfortunately not home to the world of the Jetsons. Writing is still a very powerful form of media, for the very book that this essay is centered around is still influential, forty-nine years later! However, books and newspapers are not our sole source of the written word. Online blogs, articles, and newsletters now exist. Television and books have merged into one: the Internet. Revolutions, riots, and rebellions don’t just happen in our living rooms now, they happen on the go with us. On the subway, when we’re waiting in line at Subway, at our friend’s house as he talks about how he’s “way into subs.” The Internet is now our primary source of information. Evolution doesn’t only just occur in nature. Nonetheless, The Medium is the Massage was published in 1967, and several of McLuhan’s points were ahead of their time and remain relevant today. The most notable of points was made within the first few pages of the book where McLuhan delves into the fact that from the moment we are born to the moment we die we are under constant surveillance and that privacy essentially no
Any act of conscious communication always true, in varying degrees, two fundamental objectives. One is to inform, instruct and describe, and the other is to entertain or occupy. The products of the mass communication industry made that mandate the particularity that are targeted to a wide receiver, whose acceptance is intended to conquer. The intent of the act is expressed with the term broadcast (spread through mass media), which once meant to sow broadcast the farmland. The cinema, especially the US, is the great communication industry of the twentieth century. Although in recent decades seems to have given primacy to television, the information, education and entertainment on Western culture influence is undeniable.
The ideas put forth in Marshall McLuhan's Media Hot and Cold, present many theories regarding the effects of media on the world. What qualifies as media, in essence, is any experience or information, imparted on the awareness of an individual and/or societies. These can be physical or nonphysical influences. TV and radio are examples of physical media. Their effects and evolution can be easily observed. However, and perhaps more importantly, McLuhan examines those nonphysical influences which can be observed in the individual and society. It is not enough to merely identify these mediums as such. What is more crucial is the perpetual waxing and waning of influence of such ineffable phenomena, whose identity and existence rely upon their interdependency
The term “the media” is somewhat overused in our culture. It is a vague term we use to include any and all ways that messages are portrayed to us, usually in technology. Dr. Cyndy Scheibe, a professor at Ithaca College and media literacy expert, says that media is “messages conveyed through visuals, language, and/or sound that are mass produced for a mass audience. [Media is also] mediated by a form of technology and the producer of the message is not in the same place as the receiver of the message” (Scheibe). This means that media would include things like television, movies, the internet and print. Media doesn’t include things like text messages because they are not intended for mass audiences. For the purposes of this essay, “media” is mostly going to refer to television and video games.
Media, in its largest sense, hypothetically is one small page in the large "book of life". However, nineteenth century society has based an entire chapter of their lives on what happens in every medium used for communication. Through the creation of radio and of television in the late 1940's, and the modernization of newspapers and magazines, specifically, American culture has devoted themselves to a mass communications lifestyle in which they base most of their well being upon.
“American Media History is the story of a nation. It is the story of events in the long battle to disseminate information, entertainment, and opinion in society. It is the story of the men and women whose inventions, ideas, and struggles helped shape the nation and its media system.”(Fellow) The evolution of media has influenced countless societal and cultural changes leading to the present day. But it didn’t get this far over night. It is estimated to have begun more than 30,000 years ago through the process of cave painting. (Crewe) Following cave painting, came the invention of books being printed on blocks “The Diamond Sutra”, the Gutenberg printing press, newspapers in 1640, photographs, the radio in 1894, television, and recently computers; which lead all the way to modern day social media. Through the hard work of multiple inventors the media was able to reach where it is today. It has changed the way people communicate with each other, mostly for the better.“ The way people experience the meaning, how they perceive the world and communicate with each other, and how they distinguish the past and identify the future.” (Gitelman) Or as we know it as: a new way of communicating information from person to person.
Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams, both cornerstones in their respected media theory and cultural studies, differed in their opinions of the relationship between media technology and social change. McLuhan believed in technological determinism, which is “an approach that identifies technology, or technological developments, as the central causal element in processes of change” (Croteau, Hoynes, and Milan 290). In other words, McLuhan believes that new technology drives the way cultural values and social structures develop. He was interested in the cultural effects produced by electronic media; he was especially interested in the effects of televisions. McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage argued that technology has changed the way humans do things and interact, that “all media are extensions of some human faculty” (McLuhan 5).
Hartley, John (2002), Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts, London, Routledge, pp. 19-21.
Currently, our society is changing again with the onslaught of electric media, namely computers and the Internet. We must continue to analyze this technology with the realization that the medium is the message, or else we will never fully understand our culture or the effect of technology on it and on our lives.
McLuhan, Marshall, Perf. Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message. Perf. McLuhan, Marshall. Youtube, 1977. Web. 9 Nov 2011. .
Everyday we encounter the media in some form. It could be waking up to the sound of the radio, or passing billboards in the streets or simply just watching television. They are a lot of different forms of media, for example, verbal or written media, visual media and aural media. Examples of media would include newspapers, magazines, film, radio, television, billboard advertisements as well as the internet. Media studies came about because of the developments in mass communication and it provokes the generation of exigent questions about what we think we know as well how we came about knowing it. There are always changes in the media and the term “media” refers to the many ways of physically forming meanings as well and carrying them. The term “media studies” on the other hand, means different courses priorities different media; different theories and different learning outcomes (Bazalgette, 2000).
Each year the evolution of technology continues to grow more and more advancing with time. Media not only plays an enormous role in society but it’s become a part of our individual being and our lifestyle. The issue of the media is that it has interfered with one of the most important elements regarding any type of relationship that being communication. Its not only communication but the media has placed a hold on societies life, instead of being productive we choose to watch television not for just a show but for a full season in one sitting or instead of completing our math homework were able to go and plug the questions into a search engine. The extent of this matter has affected the United States whole heartedly in so many ways. It’s become impossible to not communicate and not come in contact with the media.
The effects of mass media have been a hot topic for scholars over thepast century. According to a study done by Ballard (2011), “with the rise of film and radio in the early part of the 1900’s,communication researchers began to study what effects media messages have on thosewho receive them.”
"Medium has become "more important" than message, says Sir Martin Sorrell."The Drum. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. .