The Medium Is The Massage: An Inventory Of Effects By Marshall Mcluhan
In the book “The medium is the massage” we see Marshall McLuhan’s work on different aspects of our society, from family to government, from individuals to a global village to which all of us belong, how media connects us and changes us, his book was a revolutionary aspect not only for himself but the society. McLuhan states that “medium” which is a mass-media is a “massage” or “message” that our world gets from one another to each other, but what does it mean exactly? “The Medium is the Message, quite simply, it means that the way that we send and receive information is more important than the information itself”.
In this video it explains merely McLuhan’s thesis which we can exercise as a way of how we are the only one who actually consumes and throw information to the outside world. Yes, media is the influencer but we are the one who is implying it. The message is that media globally connect the world, but due to its effect, people tend to lose identity such that they do not understand who they are in a pool of humans on media. People today connect meaning to information depending on the medium used to broadcast it. It also depends on how we obtain this information, is it verbal or do we read it on a paper, or did we hear it from someone the overall sense of it will be different, and different people will have contrasting emotions. In particular, these 3 pages shows how the people get connected globally by media technology but lose a sense of who they are. In this response of analysis of 3 pages, 152-154 that shows the most interesting universal truth of 21st century, three pages are connected with one page that illustrates us an image from “Alice in the Wonderland” with a quote “. . . and who are you?”
We all are aware of a famous story about a little girl named Alice who went to the Wonderland, why would McLuhan connect his thesis with this story? Alice went through dangerous things that changed her mindset, she did not know who she was before she came to Wonderland, she thought she was crazy, but in reality, she was not. An interesting observation is between a tunnel to which Alice fell on her way to the Wonderland that was full of confusions and tasks for her to complete - with media. Media is like a tunnel that takes us to its full power, it controls us and tells us different pieces of information, and you can decide in what to believe, however nowadays media takes over not only our personal opinions, but it claims some sort of power over the government as well. We as humans, don’t know who we are to a certain extent but when something on a TV tells us what to do, we automatically are under control of it.
The main pages, however, are black and white portraits of people, of different genders and different social classes that don’t have any features of a face, no eyes, no moths that can lead us to a significant thinking of what McLuhan was trying to say, what does he mean by these different groups of people? Global village, but even within globalization we are individuals, in addition to this, the idea of “non-faced” faces says that there is no individuality in our society. The following quote on page 154 says: ”I-I hardly know sir, just at present - at least I know who I was when I woke up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then. ”
Why McLuhan puts this quote, what connection it has with the time in which he lived and why this is accurate nowadays? To begin with, 1960s and 1970s were hectic and sometimes even violent times, a lot of significant events happened during that period in our history, people were fighting for their rights, the media was getting more power and nations started becoming dependent on the power of that exact electronic media. One of the major issues during that time was equality between different types and groups of people, who wanted to be heard, who were individuals and who wanted to be accepted within a society, that is where media was taking over, newspapers, tabloids with significant posters, pro’s and con’s should you say what matters or no and McLuhan was sure at that time that media will influence people. Media is the one who can change one person’s opinion that will shape his individuality, moreover ideology. For example, as the quote says you can wake up with your thought and plans about this world, then you turn on the tv or the electronic screen of your laptop that shows you the news of the exact same morning and all of a sudden your mood is changes, your thought are already in the first news that you read, why is that? Because it has power over us. It is fascinating how the one image can have many meanings, but all of them are connected. It emphasizes as well how people can get lost in a cycle of communication within the media.
McLuhan overall thesis within these three pages is the way how media shapes our individualism, how it can change it and how much we are related upon it. How electronics affected our past as the result of it, we clearly can see nowadays. We use their sources as the way of living, we might think that we are independent, but each and one of us is attached to some electronic media. The idea of “Global village” for what McLuhan is famous for, has a connection with these pages, as all of us are connected, how? By media, by electronics, by some separate world which is media. Why the picture of Alice in the Wonderland? Because when we get lost - media is always there, but sometimes it makes us see different paths with different eyes and different perspectives. Ultimately, this shows how influential media can be on humans and their understanding of the world.
