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    Review of Medium Is The Message by Marshall

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    Basit Ali
    Marshall McLuhan was a philosopher who coined the phrase "the medium is the message." He believed that the way information is transmitted is more important than the content. McLuhan predicted that new technologies would fragment human experiences and extend our senses. He warned that electronic devices could enable constant global surveillance that threatens privacy. McLuhan's theories from the 1960s have proven prescient, as social media and the internet now influence how people communicate, form relationships, and have their behaviors modified for commercial and political purposes. The author agrees with McLuhan's assessment that media are profoundly shaping human life in both empowering and concerning ways.

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    Review of Medium Is The Message by Marshall

    Uploaded by

    Basit Ali
    117 views2 pages
    Marshall McLuhan was a philosopher who coined the phrase "the medium is the message." He believed that the way information is transmitted is more important than the content. McLuhan predicted that new technologies would fragment human experiences and extend our senses. He warned that electronic devices could enable constant global surveillance that threatens privacy. McLuhan's theories from the 1960s have proven prescient, as social media and the internet now influence how people communicate, form relationships, and have their behaviors modified for commercial and political purposes. The author agrees with McLuhan's assessment that media are profoundly shaping human life in both empowering and concerning ways.

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    Review of Medium is the message by Marshall

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    Marshall McLuhan was a philosopher who coined the phrase "the medium is the message." He believed that the way information is transmitted is more important than the content. McLuhan predicted that new technologies would fragment human experiences and extend our senses. He warned that electronic devices could enable constant global surveillance that threatens privacy. McLuhan's theories from the 1960s have proven prescient, as social media and the internet now influence how people communicate, form relationships, and have their behaviors modified for commercial and political purposes. The author agrees with McLuhan's assessment that media are profoundly shaping human life in both empowering and concerning ways.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    117 views2 pages

    Review of Medium Is The Message by Marshall

    Uploaded by

    Basit Ali
    Marshall McLuhan was a philosopher who coined the phrase "the medium is the message." He believed that the way information is transmitted is more important than the content. McLuhan predicted that new technologies would fragment human experiences and extend our senses. He warned that electronic devices could enable constant global surveillance that threatens privacy. McLuhan's theories from the 1960s have proven prescient, as social media and the internet now influence how people communicate, form relationships, and have their behaviors modified for commercial and political purposes. The author agrees with McLuhan's assessment that media are profoundly shaping human life in both empowering and concerning ways.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Review: The medium is the message - Marshall McLuhan

    The medium is the message was a statement coined by Marshall McLuhan. He was a visionary, far ahead
    of his time. He was a philosopher, a communications theorist and an English professor at university of
    Toronto, Canada. He studied the media as a way of understanding what it is what makes us live in the
    way we do as a way of understanding society itself.

    The medium is the message; a deliberate paradoxical statement quite simply means that the way we
    send or receive the information is more important than the information itself. Before the arrival of
    global village – a new technological era, we used to be consumers. We consumed information by radios,
    watching television etc. but now we’ve become producers too. The social media is the power which
    shifted us from consumption to production. It offered such platforms where we communicated with
    people without having conversations. For example, two people living in two different countries could
    express their sorrows over an earthquake occurred in a third far country through retweeting the hashtag
    in twitter. Therefore, creating a communication link without yet having a proper direct conversation.

    The writer predicted the adverse effects of electronic advancement as seen in 60’s. He stressed that the
    mediums changed the way we behave. Studies showed that our memory spans have reduced due to
    digital technology; conversations being replaced with emoji’s, condolences for other person’s pain being
    replaced with a twitter top trend, friendships being replaced with followers, double tapping a word on
    phone replaced dictionaries and so forth. After technological advancements such as kindle which
    replaced dictionaries and books means that instead of storing information in our own brains, we carry
    an external brain carrying information, therefore, reducing our memory usage.

    The writer highlighted that machines came to being with a process of fragmentation. It partnered with
    human beings becoming their extension just like a book becoming an extension of the eye, clothing
    becoming extension of the skin, electric circuitry becoming an extension of the central nervous system.
    It altered the way we behave and react to our environments. For example, electric light seems a
    medium to us to read, see etc. but is a pure information. It became a medium without a message unless
    it is used to spell a word.

    The writer emphasized that it is a fact and a characteristic of all media leading us to the conclusion that
    the ‘content’ of every other medium is always another medium. For example, an artwork represents a
    creative thought process which might also appear same if showed through a computer digitally i.e. a
    different medium. Marshall writes, “For the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of
    scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” What I comprehended through this
    statement is that processes have become meaningless through media. It only exaggerates and enhances
    a process. If we take the example of social media, people post their daily lives on it. In fact, the parts of
    their lives which looks attractive and create a glittery image of a person. Friendships no more start with
    a sudden happening conversations but through a single click. People seem more concerned about their
    Instagram followers now. A person who might seem very happy on social media having more than
    thousand friends might be a loner with no real life friend to talk to in times of desperation or dejection
    and it goes vice versa.
    McLuhan prophesized that “Electronical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb
    surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to our privacy and community’s need
    to know” and further adds, “one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there
    is no redemption”. This statement clearly defines our society at the moment. We’re so much exposed
    through our social media that one can easily judge our thoughts, belief systems, and our metrics. All of
    us who interact with digital technologies have virtual identities that shadow us online. An advertisement
    suddenly pops up on a screen which seems much relevant that makes us wonder whether our devices
    are really listening or watching us.

    I recently read an article on Dawn news, a national print-media agency of Pakistan, where a Harvard
    Business School’s Shoshana Zuboff quotes a senior software engineer as saying, “The real power is that
    now you can modify real-time actions in the real world.” The goal of giant techs like Google and
    Facebook seems to use data to find patterns and predict behavior, but ultimately to modify behavior.
    This behavior modification can be to increase advertising revenue by getting more clicks, drive more
    sales with targeted advertisements, sway public opinion on policy issues or electoral outcome just like
    accusations on US presidential elections held in 2016. These companies have been manipulating
    thoughts and actions ranging from consumer behavior to voting patterns that have been proven
    successful.

    The fact that what Marshall McLuhan predicted in 1967 became a reality, truly amazes me. He
    propagated all these ideas when there was no social media or internet but the rise of global village was
    becoming visible. Therefore, I second the ideas presented by Marshall McLuhan since it is time now to
    think of our basic human rights of privacy, autonomy and self-determination. Undoubtedly, mediums
    are affecting our lives, engulfing us in an inescapable and unavoidable vacuum of technology,
    automation and media.

    Dated: 30/09/2019

    Written by Basit Ali (Animation Design – Roll No. 0002)

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