Mcluhan's Theories

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Contraints table :

Introduction...................................................................................................................... 2

1. Media are not neutral tools:.......................................................................................4

2. Media are extensions of the men’s and women’s senses:........................................8

3. Each medium is in constant interplay with other media...........................................11

4. Characteristics of Media and how they operate on people:.....................................13

Conclusion:.................................................................................................................... 15

Bibliography................................................................................................................... 16

1
Introduction

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher of


communication theory. He was born on July 21 st, 1911 in Edmonton, Alberta
to Elsie Naomi and Herbert Ernest McLuhan. Actually, his work is considered
as one of the bases of the study of media theory, and had also practical
applications in the advertising and television industries. 1 McLuhan is the one
who coined the phrases “The Medium is the Message” and “The Global
Village”. He was also known for having predicted The World Wide Web
almost thirty years before it was invented. 2 What is more, he was the
founder of the Center for Culture and Technology in Toronto. He was
nicknamed “the mister electric of the 20th century”. He died in his sleep on
December 31st, 1980 in Toronto. Still, he would continue to be a controversial
figure in academic circles.3 And with the arrival of the internet, the interest in
his work was renewed because it offered a good prospective for the study of
new technologies. 4
McLuhan studied media as a way of understanding society. He
introduced his famous aphorism or dictum “The Medium is the Message” in
his most widely known book “Understating Media: The Extensions of Men”,
published in 1964. Here, he proposed that the medium, not the content it
carries, embeds itself in the message. In a way, McLuhan understood
“medium” in a broader sense. But what does it mean? And how can a
medium be its own message? To what extent is such a dichotomy valuable?
This is what it is explained in the first chapter the book.
Also called “the Pop Philosopher” for his recent and bold assumptions,
such as, the Medium is the Message, or the Global village, McLuhan declared
his views on the new science he created: media ecology, which is a set of
critical and objective observations on the reality of media and their social
effects:
“The Medium is the Message” is one of his most influential
observations. In this paper we hope to help the readers understand better
his points of view on the question. We are going to shade some light on
these few principlesi:

1. Media are not neutral tools, but they have considerable psychic and
social consequences, without regards to their content;
2. Media are extensions of the men’s and women’s senses: they
manipulate our perception of the space and time;
3. Each medium is in constant interplay with other media;

Explaining these principles presupposes a step-by-step procedure.


Hence, we will try to be as much explicit as possible in order to provide you
1
Unknown author (2011: 1)
2
Plummer (2011: 1)
3
Beale (2008: 1)
4
Boxer (2003: 1)
2
with detailed and accurate precisions about McLuhan’s dictum “The Medium
is the Message”. Then, we will demonstrate to what extent understanding
this notion is useful.

3
1. Media are not neutral tools:

“Media are not neutral tools, but they have considerable psychic
and social consequences, without regards to their content”

For many people, the conventional meaning for "medium" refers to the
mass-media of communication, most notably radio, television, the press and
the Internet. Besides, most of them apply the conventional understanding of
"message" as content or information. For McLuhan, however, this is a
completely mistaken conclusion that, in some way, the channel supersedes
the content in importance. He also includes in his observations and
researches other mediums that are not usually known as such by the public.
The generally recognized scheme of communication is based on three
entities: the issuer, the channel and receiver. It serves the message.

issuer Medium receiver

-------------------------- --------------------------

The message

Schematization of a Communication Circuits

The transmission channel is a medium that surrounds the message and


he is never neutral: it affects the message significantly. He turns to the point
of changing the value of the content. For example, a small photo in a family
album sends a different message to the viewer if the same image is
displayed on a large wall in an art gallery. The context produced by the
media changes the meaning of the message, it determines.

4
McLuhan asserts that: [...] “All technologies gradually create a human
environment totally new. Environments are not passive containers, but
active processes. [P. 21]. Thus according this, and simply put: [...] "The
message is the medium" means, in the electronic age, a completely new
environment has been created.

Electric lighting has changed the notions of night and day, inside and
outside. But not only that, when it hits the existing models of human
organization it gives way for new possibilities, and brings ne changes in
these models. Cars can drive all night, and athletes play ball in the evening.
In a word, the message of the electric light is total change. It is pure
information without content that can diminish its force transformation and
information.

Actually, he assumes that media can have considerable effects on


individuals. He argued that it was the medium itself that shaped and
controlled the scale and form of human association and action. 5 What he was
saying is that a medium, independent of its content or all the channeled
information, has its own intrinsic effects on our psyches, our associations and
our actions, which are its unique message.6 In other words, under this light of
research; the content information should be ignored as unimportant.

It is quite worthy to understand that it is not the only the message one
gets from the information contained in a medium that matters, but also the
medium in itself with it particular characteristics and the environment it
creates, represent a message by itself, with the changes it bring on human
understanding of the world. It alters dramatically the way, we humans, look
at things therefore, giving us much more important information about the
world and ourselves than the consequential and temporary information of
any kind speculated by the medium in question. It is the relationship of “the
whole” to a “parte” or of a long chain to a particular sequence of this chain.

In a word media vehicles two main messages but on completely


different dimensions (one is carried by the information that is been displayed
by the medium and the second is created by the whole existence,

5
McLuhan (1964 : 9)
6
Logan (unknown date : 6)
5
organization and working of one medium we are observing, or the
combination of all the media we know); this second notion is the most
importance one; because it is the less obvious and less observable by
people. Media as existing entities and the respective environments they
create, surround us completely, we are so used to the environment created
by media that we hardly think about it. we tend to take media as granted
and use it in our daily lives without trying to contemplates their effects on us
or even trying to figure out the meaning of their existence, nor do we know
the extent of their influence on us. ) As a matter of fact, “McLuhan always
tells us to look beyond the obvious and seek the non-obvious changes or
effects that are enabled, enhanced, accelerated or extended by the new
thing” .7 The aphorism “The Medium is the Message” also carries another
meaning: that of a medium transforming its message or content .8 For
instance, “It does not matter what we say on the telephone. As a service, it is
a huge environment, and that is the medium and this affects everybody
whereas a telephone conversation affects only few”. 9 It concerns only the
two people speaking on that particular phone, in that particular moment.
Similarly, the message of a newscast/news broadcast are not the news
stories themselves, but a change in the public attitude towards crime, or the
creation of a climate of fear.10

A third recurring example is that of the light bulb. According to


McLuhan, a light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper
has articles or a television has programs. Nevertheless, it is a medium with a
social effect. This means that a light bulb enables people to create spaces
during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. McLuhan
argues, "A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence."11 This
implies the light bulb is a medium without any content. According to him;
men are never aware of the basic rules systems and cultures that constitute
the environment in which they live. [P. 23] unfortunately, people tend to
focus on the obvious, which is the content, to provide us valuable

7
Federman(2004: 2)
8
Logan (unknown date : 6)
9
You tube
10
Federman(2004: 2)
11
McLuhan (1964 : 8)
6
information, but in the process, we largely miss the structural changes in our
affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time. 12

2. Media are extensions of the men’s and women’s senses:

“Media are extensions of the men’s and women’s senses: they


manipulate our perception of space and time”

At the age of electricity, where our central nervous system is


technologically extended, we point commit ourselves vis-à-vis the whole of
humanity and we associate, we necessarily participate in depth and the
consequences of all our actions. [...] Contracted by electricity, our world is
nothing more but a village. [P. 33].

recent extensions via electronic technology elevate the process of


technological extension to a new level of significance: “Whereas all previous
technology (save speech, itself) had, in effect, extended some part of our
bodies, electricity may be said to have outered the central nervous system
itself, including the brain” (247). Thus, pre-electric extensions are explosions
of physical scale outward, while electronic technology is an inward implosion
toward shared consciousness, a change that has significant implications.
McLuhan states: “Our new electric technology that extends our senses and
nerves in a global embrace has large implications for the future of language”
(80). This electronic extension of consciousness is one about which McLuhan
himself seems conflicted, as when he writes: "The electric technology is
directly linked to our central nervous system." "By submitting
tirelessly technologies, we become servomechanisms." At times
McLuhan speaks of a movement toward a global consciousness in positive
terms, as when he writes: “might not our current translation of our entire
lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe,
and of the human family, a single consciousness?” (61). but at other times,
he expresses reservations about this development: “With the arrival of
electric technology, man extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the
central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a
development that suggests a desperate and suicidal auto-amputation […]”

12
Federman(2004: 1)

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(43) Thus, one of McLuhan’s key concerns in Understanding Media is to
examine and make us aware of the implications of the evolution toward the
extension of collective human consciousness facilitated by electronic media.
He especially brought about this concern in his other important notion “the
Global Village”.

The "global village" means every person, being connected to the whole
world, living in proximity to each other, simulated virtual proximity and
movement that comes from the din of the world to the home of each
viewer. Each viewer is at the center of the world. For McLuhan's global
village indicates that the viewer participates in the spectacle of the world.
Thus, the development of media standardizes each village providing the
same cultural references. If the TV seems to him the most powerful media,
McLuhan never forget especially the radio or telephone. They just complete
the trend towards uniformity born of transport development.

Indeed, the beginning of new world preference to global openness has


begun mostly with the great and rather rapid development of transportation
means. Let us take the example of the train. Railroads connect cities, and
trains connect people. It permits people to go to new places of learning and
work or markets… etc. they go to places they wouldn’t have gone to without
the train, so it creates new environments for them. Therefore it creates for
them more opportunities of work, new social lives, for communication. These
opportunities are no more but representations of great changes in every
aspect of human life for instance from rural to urban life. Both are very
distinct environments, (almost contradictory) so what made such a change in
human perspective? The means of exportation heled creating ne
environments, and therefore were bridges for change , by communicating
new values (i.e. new rules of organization) we all agree that economy
flourishes in areas where transportation is more dense so it alters or changes
the whole economic and social geography of a region. It has real and
physical effect on people and on their minds; therefore, new ways of thinking
emerge. Now we can note the differences between rural forms of life and
urban ones. So here we see that although the train is which is not generally
taken as a medium, acts just like one; although it doesn’t carries any
message in the form of coded information (visual, audible, or written) it does

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play the role of media (an environment maker) and the people it carries
might just be the message of the train. In the same light mass media such as
television, radio, papers or more broadly the World Wide Web, play the same
role of creating new environments and influencing people’s daily lives.
Media become the message and people the content. New technologies are
media that extend and transform the body's functions and the mind’s focus,
therefore how we can neglect such an important aspect of our lives. These
things (media) are bigger than we thought. They are environments that
surround us completely, and affect us deeply, since we are always in touch
with them or one of them at least they are constantly affecting us on daily
bases

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3. Each medium is in constant interplay with other media

“Each medium is in constant interplay with other media”

The invention of the wheel, printing, electric light, are media that have
gradually created a new human environments. "The media are not passive
containers, but active processes." They are an extension of our nervous
system, and they change throughout our relationship to the world. The old
medium is contained in this new medium that will reshape a completely new
way. Thus the title of McLuhan’s most famous book understanding media:
the extension of men. Tries to saying, is that: media as extensions of our
senses, establish new relationships not only between our sense of ourselves,
but also among themselves, when they influence each other. The radio has
changed the shape of the newsletter, just as it has changed the shape of the
image in the talkies. Television caused radical changes in radio
programming, as well as in the novel form documentary or descriptive.

I an interview of McLuhan the journalist asked him, if media affects


people’s literacy, and is so, then how? “Is a TV watcher less or more literate
than a radio listener?

McLuhan answered by “yes”, “I think that a Radio listener is far more


literate than a fervent TV watcher” and he justifies his answer with the
complementarily that exist between different media. Therefore, we can make
the following conclusion.

Hybrid energy or the mutual influence that has a medium on another is


the source of new knowledge management. Medium might control of
influence, or alter the way we perceive information from another media used
(either parallel, or interchangeably with another on) therefore it changes the
message. For example; hot media having the same characteristics permit
interaction of the information they vehicul; listening to radio do not emerge
you completely in the contente, it leaves room for guessing, creativity . the
brain is highly stimulated, for they demend effort from the litner, or in case
of reading, the reader need a great deal of imagination work, and takes a lot
of decisions in a short moment, because radio or a book, only makes apel to
one sens such as hearing, or sight , to complete the picture the brain must
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imagine (create the effect on the other senses! A reader when reading tends
to see images in is mind in order to understand and assimilate the message!
While listing to radio, we only get to hear the words then we create the story
in the form of a mental movie) in both cases we use our brains, and judge
with our own tools. While in the case of TV which is a cool media all our
senses (or the principal ones) are stimulated at the same time, we are
overcrowded with imposed messages that come readymade in the program,
we are merely consumers; in fact, it inhibits our abilities of critical thinking
and imaginative capacities. The message conveyed here, is that the
information given to you accurate and should be taken as such, and the way
things are displayed is the only one possible way. That is why TV allows little
interaction with other Media, and with other realities or environments,
because it is a strong environment that devours people completely.

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4. Characteristics of Media and how they operate on people:

McLuhan indicates two challenging notions Hot and Cold Media. Probably
no part of McLuhan’s theory is more confusing and confounding to his critics
than his discussion of hot versus cool media in chapter 2 of Understanding
Media. But, we can understand this part of McLuhan’s theory if we impose
some linear order on it.

Hot Medium Cool Medium


 extends single sense in high  low definition (less data)
definition  high in audience
 low in audience participation participation
 engenders  engenders holistic patterns
specialization/fragmentation  tribalizes
 detribalizes  includes
 excludes  organic
 uniform, mechanical  collapses space
 extends space  creates vertical
 horizontally repetitive associations

McLuhan provides examples of hot versus cool media as follows:

Hot Medium Cool Medium

 photograph  cartoon
 radio  telephone
 phonetic alphabet  ideographic/pictographic
 print writing
 lecture  speech (orality)
 film  seminar, discussion
 books  television
 comics

The same thing goes with Television effect. For McLuhan television
creates its own universe, founded and affirms its own legitimacy. It has such
strength, as measured by its audience; it produces its own worldview taken
into account by all. In this respect it differs from all other media and arises
not only as a vehicle for a message but the message itself. The message is
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television; the cultural norm is enacted by television. Media are means of
communication and dissemination of culture, they are far from being neutral,
and they make their own rules on humans.

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Conclusion:

To conclude, we show that despite all our efforts to understand the


aphorism “The medium is the Message”, it is still a mysterious and
somewhat ambiguous notion. Often people will triumphantly hail that the
medium is "no longer the message," or flip it around to proclaim that the
"message is the medium," or some other such nonsense. McLuhan meant
that people should be aware of the effect that media, in general and
independently from the streams of information it gives to people everyday,
can have on them is greater than what they imagine and that by
understanding this they may use this knowledge to protect themselves from
unconscious manipulation via media, and help developing media and
technology in a way that goes with their expectations, and cope with their
needs. Unfortunately, this meaning is not all that obvious. Yet it is
particularly useful to try to understand this dichotomy which informs us that
the fact of noticing a change in our societal or cultural ground conditions
indicates the presence of a new message, implying the effects of a new
medium. As McLuhan reminds us, "Control over change would seem to
consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to
deflect and control force."

What is worth remembering is that although the prophetic nature of his


work has sometimes been exaggerated, it is, however, certain that most of
its claims appear to fit our most recent conceptions of media. In fact,
McLuhan dreamed of a world where everybody could understand the growing
influence that media play in their lives and how they gradually change the
shape of the relations of people on the hole planet, to try and anticipate that
change, eliminate the negative, and make a better world

Bibliography

 Anonymous Author. (1967). "Programming: Getting the Message" in


Time (online article retrieved on March 3rd, 2011).
 Beale, N. (2008). "Living in Marshall McLuhan's galaxy" in The
Guardian (UK) (online article retrieved on Retrieved March 21th, 2011).

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 Boxer, S. (2003). "CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK: McLuhan's Messages, Echoing
On Iraq" in The New York Times (online article retrieved on March 10th,
2011).
 Federman, M. (2004).”What is the meaning of the medium is the
message?”. (online article consulted on March 10 th,
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessa
ge.htm)
 Logan, R. K. “The Medium is the Message is the Content: Meaning,
Media, Communication and Information in Biosemiosis and Human
Symbolic Communication” (PDF file), p.6.
 McLuhan, H. M. (1964). “Understanding Media”. London: Routledge,
pp: 8-9 &199.
 Plummer, K. "Historicist: Marshall McLuhan, Urban Activist" (online
article retrieved on September 20th, 2011, consulted on
www.torontoist.com)

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i
1 We refer to the idea that “the media is the message” as presented in the first chapter: M. McLuhan,

Understanding Media (1964, Cambridge, Mass., MIT, 1994, pp. 7-21).


2 McLuhan… pp. 41-47. This idea is deeply linked to the previous one; indeed: “Any extension, whether of skin, hand,
or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex” (McLuhan… p. 4). Another principle very close to this is that
media vary according their visual, tactile ore audile information.
3 McLuhan… pp. 48-55, 179, etc.
4 See later in the text for extensive discussion. In McLuhan… pp. 90, 97, 126-129 (effects of lighting),188
(photography), 348 (objects create their space).

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