Marshall McLuhan Concepts about Media - Essay Example

?Journalism, Mass Media and Communication Marshall McLuhan, who lived between 1911 and 1980, was a cultural critic, media theorist, and provoker. McLuhan became widely recognised during the 1960s due to his deep insights about the information era. One of McLuhan's best known concepts which are basically summarised by the assertion that, "the medium is the message." The fundamental theory in the statement “the medium is the message” is that the medium through which content is contained has a significant role in the way it is identified. A medium’s qualities have as much effect as the information circulated by the medium. For instance, if a person reads about an incident in the newspapers, he will be affected differently from a person that watches it on television, or even another person who hears about it from a friend who watched it.1 Hot and Cool Media His famous division of media into "hot" and "cool" media types sought to describe the different sensory effects that different types of media had on their consumers. ‘Hot’ media was descriptive of elements of the mass media such as radio, newspapers and magazines. These media types give a lot of information to the reader or listener but do not give room for a lot of sensory involvement or completion on the part of the listener or reader. What McLuhan described as "cool" media included media sources like television as well as the telephone or television. Due to the fact that these devices do not give as much information as the radio or newspaper, they have to exact a stronger sensory “hold” on the attention of their users so as to remain relevant. McLuhan was especially engrossed with the effect of the television, which was just then gaining popularity, on its regular viewers. He was even more enthralled when later research established that television actually affects viewers by supporting them in developing passive brain wave patterns. Each mediums form is connected with a different understanding where the senses are concerned and so expose the consumer to different experiences. These experiences or alterations of perceptions form the basis of the general message’s meaning. McLuhan had a broad definition for the word ‘media’. He perceived it as “any technology that ... forms extensions of the human senses as well as body”.2 McLuhan correlated parts of the body with technological parts so as to give a better characterisation of how he perceived technology. For instance, he felt that clothing was simply an extension of the skin, while the book could be said to be an extension of the eye. McLuhan felt that these industrial extensions could in fact intensify a specific human sense while the remaining other four were disregarded. Therefore, technology, according to McLuhan, interfered with people’s sensory balance, which then affected the emotional responses of the larger human society. This process, according to McLuhan, could be viewed as being the unintended cause of all the principal cultural shifts that have typified eras of human history like the industrial age or the renaissance. McLuhan believed that human beings adapt to their environment by way of given balances, and that the main medium used in each age unearths a distinct sense ratio. McLuhan perceived every medium as being an exaggeration of one of the human faculties. He even believed that the human central nervous system is represented in the electric circuitry. It was McLuhan’s believe that in the prehistoric era, humankind existed in the perfect condition in which all of man’s senses functioned together in perfect synchronisation. In his words, “prior to the discovery of the phonetic alphabet, humankind existed in a world where all the five senses were simultaneous and balanced; this was a world of filled with resonance as well as tribal depth”.3 Humankind, according to McLuhan, lived in a space that was devoid of margins or even a centre. The only way through which preliterate people could exchange ideas was through speech. In essence, all information exchanges were sound based, as well as social discourses. McLuhan spoke of the benefits of face-to-face communication and affirmed that “Speech is basically the outing…or physical expression of all the human senses at one go”.4 As a result of this conclusion, McLuhan was deeply concerned with the effects that printing and learning the phonetic alphabet would have on the human society. The use of the phonetic alphabet appeared to imply that information exchange would no longer be an instantaneous process, while the function of reading would serve to individualise the elements that made the society due to the fact that for reading to be successful, it had to be performed when one was alone. The development of the phonetic alphabet, according to McLuhan, would result in the sense of sight being raised above the other senses. McLuhan also believed that the development of abstract thought was the direct result of the individualism that was encouraged by the function of reading. The imbalance that resulted from the replacement of community harmony in the human society by individualism would, according to McLuhan, generate “mechanised” industrial culture. Even though he held such strong feelings about the discovery of the alphabet, he was much more positive about the electronic age that saw the widespread use, in residential homes, of films, radios, the telephone, the television, and the computer. The electronic age, McLuhan felt, reinstated humankind’s lost balance of the senses. This was possible because of the instantaneous nature of electronic media. Mechanised technologies are capable of removing all constraints of space and time that have been imposed. Electronic media like television is different from the print medium because it does not glorify just the eye, but stimulates all the five senses concurrently through the nervous system. Electronic media not only re-established McLuhan’s “tribal” balance of the five senses, but also exposed the human nervous system to the world thus generating a vast neural awareness shared by all. In basically asserting that the “medium is the message”, McLuhan’s approach invalidates the customary dominance of content over medium. McLuhan felt that the medium has been disregarded for so long due to the fact that it is because it is invisible. He gave a metaphor to illustrate how he felt about the real power behind the message being ignored by comparing the medium to the electromagnetic particles that create the visible spectrum. It is a fact that illuminates the world even though its structure cannot be seen with the naked eye. McLuhan stated that, “electric light is basically untainted information. It is a medium that contains no message”.5 The content, he was quick to stress, is merely any object or thing that the electric light happens to be illuminating. “Whether the light is being used for brain surgery”, he asserted, or night baseball is not the subject of concern”.6 The medium is the message as the media forms its own environments, which are favourable to some messages even as they are hostile to others. McLuhan believed that in the same way that ultra-violet light can render some colours white, different media magnify or stifle their content. Marshall McLuhan was basically concerned with the fact that humanity tends to accept things at face value and focus on what is visible. In doing so, most people miss the structural transformations in their personal lives which are introduced in a very subtle manner. Whenever humanity comes up with a new idea or invention, the majority of its properties will be evident for all to see. Moreover, after the product or idea has been used for some time, people will start to notice additional properties of the creation or idea that were not obvious to them when it was first introduced. Many of such unforeseen consequences originate from the fact that there are circumstances in the human culture and society that most people do not take time to think about before embarking on their projects. These can range from intellectual issues to tertiary effects that result from numerous interactions. All of these procedures that are not obvious at first, are what may be referred to as the context. They all operate in stillness when influencing the way that people interact with each other, as well as their society. ‘Context’ is basically the word that can be used to describe all aspects that go unnoticed at the onset. Even in the example of nature, there is a lot more taking place and that is not evident, than all the changes that can be seen. McLuhan basically sought to emphasise that the word "message" is descriptive of the change of pace, scale or pattern which a new idea or invention brings into human concerns.7 It is not the use of the invention, or context, that is important, but the adjustment in inter-personal dynamics that the invention carries with it. Therefore, a theatrical production’s message is not found in the play being created or the accompanying music, but probably the shift in tourism that the formation of the play may encourage. Where a particular theatrical production is concerned, its message might comprise of a change in action or attitude from the audience which comes from the medium of the play. McLuhan, through his assertions, exhorted people to look past what was obvious or evident and seek for the alterations that are not immediately obvious. In his book, ‘Understanding Media’, McLuhan explained that a medium is basically an extension of the human entity. McLuhan always imagined a medium as being anything from which a transformation emerges. Due to the fact that different kinds of transformation arise from everything that human beings create or conceive, it can be stated that all human ideas, inventions, ideals, and innovations are types of media according to McLuhan’s inferences.8 Therefore, human beings can understand the characteristics as well as natures of all things that they create or conceive from the unnoticed changes that they inspire (message.) McLuhan observed that people will usually be sidetracked by a medium’s content unless they are first made aware of their intrinsic capacity to focus on the thing that is unimportant. McLuhan’s assertion that "the medium is the message" basically sought to emphasise that being able to perceive change in the society is an indication of the existence of a new message, which are, essentially, a new medium’s effects. With this predetermined discovery, human beings can set out to distinguish and categorise the new medium before it is noticeable to every other person after a number of years. If it is established that the new medium will be harmful to the community culture or society people can influence the evolvement or development of the new modernism before its effects grow to be all-encompassing. As McLuhan stated, "Control over any kind of transformation should appear to be effected ahead of the change and not in moving with consist in moving with it. The expectation supplies the power to redirect as well as control the force".9  McLuhan's concepts have affected the way many scholars think of the media’s technology and its ability to affect the general society. McLuhan made the notion of an incorporated planetary nervous system a part of the popular culture, and unintentionally assuaged the fears of any elements that were hesitant about allowing such entities to dominate the mainstream media. When the Internet began to be more widespread, its rapid spread and integration into all facets of human life did not cause upsets, but appeared to be the natural successor of media channels that dominated in the 1960’s and 70’s when McLuhan was making his observations. References Carveth, D.L. (2008) ‘Is the medium the message in psychoanalysis? in T. Gibson (Ed.), Marshall McLuhan’s “medium is the message”: information literacy in a multimedia age’, MediaTropes, vol. 1, pp. 42–56 Federman, M. (2004) What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message? Retrieved April 10 2013, from . Hobbs, R. (2005) ‘The state of media literacy education’, Journal of Communication, vol. 55, no. 4, p. 865. McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q. & Shepard, F. (2005) The media is the massage, Gingko Press, New York. Mitchell, W.J.T. (2008) ‘Addressing media, in T. Gibson (Ed.), Marshall McLuhan’s “medium is the message”: information literacy in a multimedia age’, MediaTropes, vol. 1, pp. 1–18. Read More