The Medium is the Message

In 1895 a theatre was filled to watch the following film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUEANKv964&feature=related

The finely dressed movie goers did not react to the feature film as you might suspect. Instead of complaints about it being short, or just responding with bored incredulity, these movie goers rose, screaming and fleeing from their seats, into the street. I wasn't there, but that's what I've read and the reason for their panic, I think, is that they expected this!

They did! They had not seen a moving picture before and everything they believed drove them to expect this result, and so they fled in panic. Having no frame of reference to deal with this new media they ran. In some ways this still happens today.

Now for something completely different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtycdRBAbXk

That was Marshall McLuhan, professor at the University of Toronto back in the mid 1900's. He came up with the idiom "the medium is the message," and it may have made him feel profound but what does it mean? Try and work it out for yourself. What might he mean?

Lights out. Watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6eJyth8Dvo&feature=related

A medium is like a substance in which things can be grown. Think of a medium in your bio lab's petri dishes growing bacterial cultures.

A message is not so much the words or slogans that make the message but rather what that slogan is supposed to do. Jesus said "Love your neighbor as yourself", not to make a popular phrase but, so that it would effect change, and people would love their neighbors.

So, a television, which is a fertile ground for developing culture, has an effect on culture, and so that is what it's message is. If you watch TV there will be other effects, social changes, changes to the way your living room is set up, changes to what you do in the evening etc. That is the message.

For a very thorough explanation of this idea check out this website.

http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm

Here are some videos that let you hear Marshall McLuhan talk about it himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfS4HFcPJWU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7GvQdDQv8g&NR=1