Mediuuummm?

To be honest this weeks lecture was rather confusing for me, and the research after it didn’t help. Once I felt like I was beginning to understand the concept, I would learn something else that would throw me off, but here is my attempt to explain what I learnt.

Marshall Mcluhan, a Canadian philosopher, once stated that
“The medium is the message”. Whilst initially confusing (and to be honest, still is), the statement begins to make a bit more sense once it is fully broken down.

Mcluhan saw that the effect of the message was more important than the message itself, how it made the receiver feel (happy, sad, angry, etc) was more important that the literal message being sent.

Mcluhan argued that what has been communicated throughout history has been less important than the particular medium in which people have communicated with, the effects of the technology, not the technology itself.

So what does that all actually mean? I don’t know for certain, but what I have gathered from the lecture and my own research is that the medium changes people, and it changes how the message being communicated is perceived, for example the internet is the medium, it communicates a message, but it has also fundamentally changed the way we live our lives.

Still, extremely confusing, hence the tittle.

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