Blog # 6

McLuhan's Message

The idea the Marshall McLuhan introduced, “The Medium is the Message,” is a concept that is difficult to grasp. Our society sees a medium as a form of communication, like radio or television. However, McLuhan defines a medium as an extension of ourselves and of our bodies. It extends our innate abilities and it changes how we exist in society. For example, Marshall McLuhan would describe glasses as a medium because it extends our innate ability of vision. He would describe a phone as a medium because it extends our innate ability to listen and speak. The message, as seen by our society, is a concept. However, McLuhan sees this message as unseen or unintended content. More specifically, he sees it as an unforeseen consequence. An iPod is a piece of technology that can accurately define McLuhan’s theory. An iPod, an extension of our hearing capability, is the medium. The message is the isolation this iPod brought into society. People were dropping out into their own worlds. As seen here, the concept (being able to listen to music freely) is not important, and an unforeseen consequence, isolation, emerged. The medium is the message; content is insignificant and the important idea is the technology itself.

Technological determinism is an autonomous role that technology plays in society that has inherent effects. It can easily be applied to McLuhan’s idea. In his argument, technology determines the way we experience life. For instance, it is different to watch a hockey game at the Verizon Center to see the Capitals win than to watch the game on television. At the actual rink, the individual chooses what to observe: the puck, the goalie, the Red Rockers, the crowd. This represents how vision is a linear and connective process. However, on television, the camera man and editors choose what the individual sees. Television has made vision disconnected because it has gone beyond our physical control. Also, the introduction of the replay has also determined how we watch a game. It changes how we participate in the game. The level and scale of audience participation is also important to fully understand McLuhan’s theory.

Marshall McLuhan’s essay, “Understanding Radio,” mentions how mediums are hot and cool. These classifications organize different levels of participation. A hot medium does not require an audience to actively participate. For example, radio is a hot medium because it only includes one sense, audio capability. It does not require much participation; there is not much effort in simply listening to the radio itself. Also, a lecture is a hot medium; you are simply being told ideas that you are expected to take as fact. There is not much participation. On the other hand, cool media requires total participation. In contrast with a lecture, a seminar, or discussion, is seen as a cool medium. Unlike lectures, seminars involve the active participation of sharing and comprehending ideas. Television is also seen as a cool medium; you’re actively participating with your imagination by deciphering images as well as decoding the dots, or pixels, on the screen. It requires audio and visual capabilities in order to fully comprehend the information. Also, it is essential to be able to recognize abstract patterning presented in television. This ability to recognize a pattern is necessary to understand specific messages.

Pattern recognition is important to how society interprets everyday life. When society is moving at a slow and steady pace, it is difficult to recognize any pattern. However, when society is at a fast pace, patterns can be recognized. The instant a pattern is recognized, people begin to question the system. This system can refer to the way in which they are expected to govern their lives, the government itself, or any other pattern that people may notice. For example, a pattern understood by most human beings is to be born, go to school, work, and then die. Once people begin to question such a system, they “drop out.” This also occurs when people recognize a continuous cycle that society and technology have created. This causes the importance of each day to be lost. This can be related to McLuhan in that these people who have dropped out wish to make their lives more meaningful; they buy a big screen television or some other product to bring back their once contented mindset. This creates the theory in which the habits of the consumer effect the involvement of the producer. Through this, the consumer now acts as the producer. This can be related back to the unanticipated consequence described by McLuhan.

In his essay entitled, “What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message,” Mark Federman describes unanticipated consequence in terms of ground and figures. The ground, or context, represents the “dynamic processes that are entirely non-obvious.” They operate beyond our recognition and influence how we react with each other and society as a whole. The ground remains in society’s nonconscious processes until change appears as a sudden insight. This change is the most important factor. Once society recognizes this change (which can also be described as a change of a pattern) it becomes a figure. These figures are the objects and concepts we do notice. These figures are in our conscious awareness and conscious thoughts. This concept and theory of ground VS figures is helpful to understand McLuhan’s idea that the medium is in fact the message.

Through advancing technology, more and more messages, mediums, ground concepts, and figures concepts will become apparent in our society. While society is influencing how technology is constructed, the technology ultimately determines how society lives its life. Though society may or may not realize this, it has become an inevitable fact in many aspects of life. Even though we as a society may not think in terms of how the medium is the message, we still live in the lifestyle that the medium and its message have created and we still abide by the concepts that McLuhan’s theory proposed (the dude abides, man!).