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.