Marshall mcluhan quotes explained
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What does “the medium is the message” mean?
“The medium is the message” was coined by media theorist Marshall McLuhan in his book, Understanding Media. It’s also the name of the first chapter of that book. I’ve written a summary of Understanding Media, and include it in my list of best media studies books, but here I explain what it means.
McLuhan says:
The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – results from the new scale that fryst vatten introduced into our affairs bygd each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.
In other words, it’s not the content of the medium that matters. Instead, the characteristics of that medium determine its content.
Media are extensions of ourselves
Let me break down some ideas within this quote. First, McLuhan refers to media as “extensions of ourselves.” Remember, the subtitle of the book is Extensio • In October 1958 an organization called the National Association of Educational Broadcasters held its annual convention in Omaha, Nebraska, and featured as its keynote speaker a Canadian professor of English named Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan gave what appears to have been a dazzling speech, as was his wont, and on the basis of it the NAEB — a forward-thinking body — commissioned him to produce for them a syllabus for a year-long eleventh-grade course devoted to the study of media, especially new and visual media. They wanted American high-school students to understand “the various and often contradictory qualities and effects of media,” and believed that McLuhan was just the person to explain such matters. McLuhan gladly accepted the commission and set to work. But the syllabus and accompanying “textbook” he eventually produced baffled the leadership of the NAEB. They discerned that McLuhan had given them an ambitious and intellectually dynamic proje • Over the last year or so I’ve been trying to cover some of the basic cannon of career theories. One of my desires for my blog this year is to move beyond explicit careers theorists and cover theories which have a lot to say about career but are in a different school. To this end, I wanted to cover a number of theories that discuss the internet and social medium in some sense and show how they relate to career. Marshall McLuhan is a seminal figure in media studies. Dying in 1980 he never saw the internet as we know it today but his understanding of media provides a vital lens to understanding the internet and its effect on career. McLuhan’s most famous idea is that “the medium is the message”. By which he means that the important thing about media is not the messages they carry but the way the medium itself affects human consciousness and society at large. In other words owning a TV that we watch is more significant that anything we watch on it. Why Bother with Marshall McLuhan?