The medium is the message

Another RN program, this one Late Night Live with Phillip Adams.

It was entitled "Media Overload: global attention deficit disorder." and the transcript should be available tomorrow at the Late Night Live site. In a nutshell it was about the impact of the media, in particular its medium, upon society. You know, the kind of stuff sociologists and the like get their PhD's in so they can profess to be qualified to judge society and therefore score their big break on TV.

Anyway, the interesting point was the quote they used to introduce the program,
"the medium is the message". It was apparently coined by Marshall Mcluhan, in the 60s, contained in his book "Understanding media: The Extensions of Man".
From my understanding, the phrase intends to remind us that in using any media, it is not enough just to appreciate the content but we must realise and consider the context and impact that the medium has on the communication and understanding of the content. This is a middle of the road view compared to McLuhan's actual message as suggested in "Mcluhan's Message Clarified", who states that it is all media. In a way he is right but the important thing should surely be the content i.e. the original thought that the media carried.

As an aside, arguably there are concepts and thoughts that trascend all time. These are probably similar to what are called the "Great Ideas" by the Great Books of the Western World guys at the University of Chicago. Would that suggest that these concepts also have the same truth or meaning no matter what the medium?

Anyway, the impact of the media should not be forgotten seems to be the main message and whether or not a certain media is ultimately the best way to deliver a certain message. One of the most applicable media is the web ofcourse, where people spend so much time making the medium do what they want, that it ceases to become content driven. This is the challenge of the ultimate web log software, as I see. To be able to allow input of content purely for the communication of the content and not get caught up in the technical side.

I should read the Mcluhan book. Another one to add to the list.

Posted to Two_way_radio by oliver at May 16, 2002 11:59 PM