This document provides an overview of Marshall McLuhan's influential book The Medium is the Massage. It discusses McLuhan's background and key ideas about how communication technologies shape human cognition and society. Specifically, McLuhan believed that new media have non-obvious social and psychological effects by extending human faculties. The document also summarizes some of McLuhan's predictions about the implications of electric media like how it could alter education, work, politics and social groups. Finally, it considers the extent to which McLuhan's theories have been borne out and how the internet fits within his framework.
1. The medium is the massage McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q., and AGEL, J. (1967). “The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects”. New York: Bantam, 1967 ARIN6903 EXPLORING DIGITAL CULTURES - week 8 presentation by John Band 1
2. agenda 1) Marshall McLuhan 2) What is The Medium Is The Massage? 3) You 4) Extensions 5) Implications and effects 6) Discussion 2
3. Marshall mcluhan Pioneering media theorist The Mechanical Bride (1951) is one of the first academic studies of popular culture The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) pioneers the concept that communication technology shapes cognitive behaviour Understanding Media (1964) invents the phrase ‘The Medium Is The Message’ A medium is ‘an extension of ourselves’ The change that a new technology brings in people’s lives is its real meaning – ‘content’ is irrelevant 3 Stamp featuring McLuhan. Canada Post, 2000
4. What is The medium is the massage? An attempt to popularise, develop, and detail the impact of the theories set out in Understanding Media “There are possible four readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: ‘Message’ and ‘Mess Age’, ‘Massage’ and ‘Mass Age’” – Eric McLuhan “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered” 4 30-million toy trucks were bought in the U.S. in 1966. Detail from McLuhan (1967)
5. Drop this jiggery pokery and talk straight turkey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8YYM_7KUpw (0:40 to 1:22) 5 Detail from McLuhan (1967)
11. The others: “minority groups can no longer be contained”6 Detail from McLuhan (1967)
12. Extensions “All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical” The wheel is an extension of the foot The book is an extension of the eye Clothing is an extension of the skin Electric circuitry is an extension of the CNS “The extension of any one sense alters the way we perceive the world” The change currently hitting society is the extension of the CNS through electric circuitry “Purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible” 7
13. Are we all third world? http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/?video=TEA_008 8
14. Implications & effects McLuhan’s technologically determinist narrative is still echoed by ‘optimistic’ new media commentators: “We live, for the first time in history, in a world where being part of a globally interconnected group is the normal case for most citizens” – Shirky, C. (2010) It is often criticised by ‘pessimistic’ commentators, both for determinism and naiveté: (but) “[McLuhan] viewed the media effects on and tribal arousal of what today is associated with 'globalization' as potentially terrifying” – Robinson, W. (2005) 9
15. Questions To what extent has society changed in the ways that McLuhan predicted? What’s the difference between the areas where this has happened and where it hasn’t? Does the internet fit into McLuhan’s conception of an electronic medium? 10
16. References Canada Post (2000), Marshal McLuhan Millennium Stamp ‘Common Questions’ on official Marshall McLuhan website at http://marshallmcluhan.com/common-questions/[accessed April 20, 2011] Marshall McLuhan Speaks website at http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/ [accessed April 21, 2011] McLuhan, M. (1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962 McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media. New York: McGraw-Hill 1964 McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q., and Agel, J. (1967). The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. New York: Bantam, 1967 Mitchell, W.J.T., What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: U Chicago P, 2005 Robinson, W. (2005) Marshall McLuhan Reconsidered: Review of Reprinted Editions, Previously Unpublished Work, and Two Tributes. New Media and Society 7.2 (2005): pp271-280 Shirky, C. (2010) Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin, 2010 11
