The Medium is the Message.

       Marshal McLuhan was a Canadian father of forethought in the fields of communication technology. Although he had passed away before the communicative devices of the 21st century were created, his philosophies and concept of "The media is the message is the message" can still be applied to many aspects of today's mass communicative society. The study of media is important because it helps us understand our actions and the functioning of society. McLuhan’s beliefs can help extenuate this.

          In layman terms - the medium is the message can be broken down into two halves that complement each other: The medium (television, radio, text, etc) is just as important as the information being exchanged (the message). In other words, the medium is the characteristics of what we conceive and the message is what we understand. To apply this into real life, we can compare the use of books and television. Words often have multiple meanings, so readers must be good problem-solvers in order to place words in the correct order. Therefore, for this reason, everyone could interpret written work differently. Television is comprised of a visual element and a spoken element. For this reason, the same mystery and analytical abilities are not present. This is one such case, where the medium has had the opportunity to influence the idea behind the message. Here McLuhan is asking us to look beyond the obvious message, for changes based on the medium.

        The medium can also be described as an extension of ourselves, like an arm and a hammer. The hammer was created by man to allow us to put our ideas into action; similar to how language lets us express our thoughts. Both are mediums which have an effect on the expression of the message. A last analogy is one of a burglar using steak to distract a watchdog. The public can be regarded as the dog; the meat is the message; and burglar is the medium. We can lose sight of the message due to the medium and lose sight on the task at hand.

     In Summary, McLuhan’s beliefs are an interesting take on the perception and our understanding of information.  It would have been interesting to see how McLuhan applied his beliefs to communicative methods of the 21st century, as today we are communicating on a larger and global scale.

        George Owell – influential English novelist, takes his stance on how the English language has regressed. Orwell blames this largely on political and economic issues, in a cycle of bad decision making. Here we are presented with a list of passages, which the author has critiqued. Authors no longer have the ability to get their ideas across effectively; it is now a swamp of “vagueness and sheer incompetence”. Writing techniques which no longer have the same effect as they once had these include; Dying metaphors, Operators or Verbal False Limbs, Pretentious Diction and Meaningless words.  

          Use of metaphors have just been an excuse for authors to not come up with their own creative material, often they are out of place or not as relevant as they have been in the past. Operators or Verbal False Limbs are a way of beating around the bush, it makes the text seem more intellectual or politically correct when a simple more direct word would have sufficed. Similarly, this can also be seen with a pretentious diction.  Words like epic and virtually, try to make mundane events more interesting than they are in reality. Meaningless words are the use of words only for the sake of using them, this is a characteristic often used in art criticism and in politics, often if we have a word to summarize a concept even if we make not have an exact definition for that word.  In summary, writers are no longer concise; we use the long drawn out phrases of others and mash them together, this is simply because it is faster and easier but we are sacrificing on quality.

       Orwell is against politicians’ use of English; parties attack each other with “mechanically repeated phrases” and think they are above their audience and don’t want to hit them with the hard facts. Language can corrupt thought, you can get lost in the words and not realise the message. Orwell leaves us with some tips to improve our own writing; these include – avoiding figures of speech, short words are better than long ones, be conscience (cut words out), active writing is ideal and to avoid jargon.

     This was written by Orwell in 1946, many would agree that commonplace English has continued to change to this day. To relate this to CCIT, a new trend in the way of communication would include the use of textese. Texteses include shorthand – such as ‘u’ and acronyms like ‘WTF’.  I believe that Orwell would enjoy this form of communication because it is straight to the point, the shorthand lets information travel quickly and doesn’t leave any room to get lost in the words and it is all about getting the message across.

Orwell, G. (1946). Politics and the English language. Retrieved March 7^th 2012 from                         

https://portal.utoronto.ca/bbcswebdav/pid-3322554-dt-content-rid- 17730806_2/courses/Winter-2013-CCT110H5-S-LEC0101/George%20Orwell_%20Politics%20and%20the%20English%20Language.pdf