Medium is the Message by Ahsan Raza

1. Critical and Cultural Studies
Topics :
Medium is the Message
Ahsan Raza
MS Mass Communication
International Islamic University Islamabad

3. Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July
21, 1911 – December 31, 1980)
was a Canadian professor,
philosopher, and public
intellectual.
McLuhan is known for coining the
expression "the medium is the
message" and the term global
village, and for predicting
the World Wide Web almost 30
years before it was invented.

4. MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
• The phrase was introduced in McLuhan's book Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964.
• McLuhan proposes that a medium itself, not the content it
carries, should be the focus of study.
• He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role
not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by
the characteristics of the medium itself.

5. • “In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and
dividing all things as a means of control, it is
sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in
operational and practical fact, the medium is the
message.” (McLuhan, 1964)

6. • Marshall McLuhan was a strong believer that media form was
more important than the messages they were projecting
• he was less interested in semiotics than the cultural and social
impact of the medium itself.
• He famously described any medium as an extension of man,
and believed that media was the “technological simulation of
consciousness” (McLuhan, 1964).

7. • McLuhan strongly believed that the medium was more influential than the
messages that it contained. His focus was not on semiotics, but rather the
impact of the media vehicle, for example, the actual television is more
significant in the scheme of society than the messages its has been
broadcasting (McLuhan, 1964).
• McLuhan’s virtuosity came through his innovative approach when
viewing any medium, even as abstract as the electric light.
• “The electric light is pure information, it is a medium without a
message…whether the light is being used for brain surgery or night
baseball is a matter of indifference.
• It could be argued that these activities are in some way the ‘content’ of
the electric light.” (McLuhan, 1964)

8. • For electric light and power are separate from their
uses, yet they eliminate time and space factors in
human association exactly as do radio, telegraph,
telephone, and TV, creating involvement in depth.

9. • McLuhan says, “For the ‘message’ of any medium or technology
is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into
human affairs.
• The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or
wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and
enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally
new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure”.
• New world involved in our literate and mechanical culture and
electric speed mingles the culture.

10. • A. J. Liebling remarked in his book The Press, a man is not free
if he cannot see where he is going, even if he has a gun to help
him get there. For each of the media is also a powerful weapon
with which to clobber other media and other groups.
• In War and Human Progress, Professor J. U. Nef declared: “The
total wars of our time have been the result of a series of
intellectual mistakes
• Technological media are staples or natural resources, exactly as
are coal and cotton and oil. .

11. • Radio and TV, become “fixed charges” on the entire psychic life
of the community. And this pervasive fact creates the unique
cultural flavor of any society.
• New technology pays through the nose and all its other senses
for each staple that shapes its life.
• Media extensions fixed charges on our personal energies, and
that they also configure the awareness and experience of each
one of us may be perceived in another connection

12. CONCLUSION
• In Conclusion we see that how McLuhan’s work has impacted
media studies.
1. How we understand media today
2. How we understand the effects of technological communication
advances
3. Media effects on culture and society.
• "The medium is the message" tell us that noticing change in our
societal or cultural ground conditions indicates the presence of a
new message, that is, the effects of a new medium.