The writing of the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this Thursday, has entered popular jargon like that of few other modern intellectuals. Is there another line that has been quoted – and misquoted – as enthusiastically as 'the medium is the message'? McLuhan, of course, was perfectly aware of his status as the thinker du jour of the media age, the man everyone liked to quote over dinner but hadn't bothered to read – for proof, just watch Annie Hall.
But what does "the medium is the message" really mean? In the first episode of our new The Big Ideas series, Benjamen Walker gets to the bottom of the slogan with the help of Canadian novelist and McLuhan-biographer Douglas Coupland, academic Lance Strait, Marshal's son Eric McLuhan, record producer John Simon, and the Guardian's media correspondent Jemima Kiss.
Once you've finished listening to the podcast, you might want to re-read the opening of McLuhan classic essay:
The medium, or process of our time – electric technology – is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing – you, your family, your neighbourhood, your education, your job, your government, your relation to "the others." And they're changing dramatically.
Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. The alphabet, for instance, is a technology that is absorbed by the very young child in a completely unconscious manner, by osmosis so to speak. Words and the meaning of words predispose the child to think and act automatically in certain ways. The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement. It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media.
The older training of observation has become quite irrelevant in this new time, because it is based on psychological responses and concepts conditioned by the former technology – mechanization.
Innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our "Age of Anxiety" is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools – with yesterday's concepts.
Youth instinctively understands the present environment – the electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth. This is the reason for the great alienation between generations. Wars, revolutions, civil uprisings are interfaces within the new environments created by electric informational media.
Marshall McLuhan, 'The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects' (1967). Reproduced with permission by Penguin Books
Over the course of the next week, we will follow up this podcast with a series of blogposts. Please tell us in the thread below what aspect of McLuhan's theory you would like us to explore, and who else you would like to hear from on the subject.
Many thanks to:
Composer Myroslaw Bytz & Ubuweb
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/audio/2011/jul/20/big-ideas-podcast-medium-message
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