As I read McLuhan, I got a little frustrated. The chapter entitled “The Medium is the Message” confused the hell out of me and argued some pretty farfetched points. At first, I really agreed with what he was saying. “…it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine” (McLuhan 23). This passage suggests that what one does with what they have is what defines the object. In other words, What one does is the meaning or the message. I agree with that and feel that it can be spread to media as well. One can use pen and paper, a computer, or markers and a whiteboard. All are different media, but what one puts on the paper or computer screen or whiteboard is the meaning, the message that the person wants to get across.
BUT THEN…
McLuhan goes on to say on page 24, “For the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” This is like saying that how the message is expressed is what defines it. In other words, the media is what defines the meaning. Now this got me way off track. I thought he was saying that the media doesn’t matter that that the message is apparent and the same through any media. Then he throws this curveball at the reader and says something completely different: the way the message is presented will invoke different perceptions of what the meaning of the message is.
So confusion sets in…luckily we discussed this text very thoroughly in class last Tuesday.
Scot brought up the metaphor of a train. It doesn’t matter what the train is carrying, what matters is that the medium has effects on the economy. Alright, but I still was confused about how the medium is the content.
It all came to me with one word: CONSEQUENCE. The medium induces a consequence on the culture. It affects or changes the culture, and that definitely makes sense at the macro level. It doesn’t matter what a train is carrying, what matters is that the train was invented and the economy and culture evolved.
It all seems so clear now.
1 comment:
For the train example, what if the train was carrying nuclear weapons? ( I know, I'm crossing time barriers a little bit) Wouldn't those weapons help to shape or change culture in the future, and in that case, they are not the media but the message. I suppose, in their own right they may be a whole new medium, but I was just thinking that sometimes the messages can be significant along with the media.
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