‘The Medium is the Message’ by Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan: Unbound, The Medium is the Message, by Marshall McLuhan, Suite J Corte Madera, Gingko Press, 2005, Edited by Eric McLuhan and W. Terrence Gordon,23 pp., £47.00, ISBN 1-58423-051-7

Marshall McLuhan, one of the most important and influential scholars of the Toronto School astonished the whole world in the 1960s with his media theories- ‘The medium is the message’ and ‘The medium is the extensions of man’. These two notions were firstly arisen in the book ‘Understanding Media’ (McLuhan, 2001). In 2005, based on the heritage of McLuhan, his son Eric McLuhan and W. Terrence Gordon started a program called the Unbound Program, and collected ‘twenty pieces from McLuhan’s pen’ which were ‘never previously assembled’ (McLuhan and Gordon, 2005:5). This is the book ‘Marshall McLuhan: Unbound’.

The article ‘The Medium is the message’ in the book ‘Unbound’ came originally from Houston Forum in the spring of 1960(McLuhan and Gordon, 2005:2), 4 years before publish of ‘Understanding Media’. This was the first time for McLuhan to illustrate his best-know theme, and that period of work ‘eventually formed the core of Understanding Media’ (McLuhan and Gordon, 2005:2).

As McLuhan argued in the beginning of ‘Understanding Media’, some previous scholars such as General David put too much emphasis on the content of media. (McLuhan, 2001:11) As a result, the nature of the medium was ignored, and human beings would become ‘in the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of his own being in a new technical form.’ (McLuhan, 2001:12) McLuhan advocated studying the medium itself rather than the contents of the medium.

In this article, McLuhan mainly illustrate his idea about ‘the medium is the message’ by...

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...g. Although the article then becomes somewhat obscure and hard to understand, it is not a reason to deny its quality. This article is, therefore, strongly recommended for students, educators and researchers who are interested in the area of McLuhan, media communication, Toronto School and related disciplines.

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Mcluhan, M. and Gordon, W. (2005) Marshall McLuhan. Corte Madera, CA: Ginko Press.
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