What did Marshall McLuhan mean when he said, “The medium is the message”?
Before I answer, please understand that I’m pulling this from an introductory course in mass communications I took 6 years ago. First of all, it’s important to realize that while Marshall McLuhan was a media specialist, when it comes to his famous quote, his reference to ‘medium’ doesn’t just mean telelvision or radio. McLuhan is talking about any technology that alters or shapes our relationship to “reality”. The message of any particular medium is the way in which it changes the way we interact with our environment. And even here, ‘environment’ doesn’t just mean ‘nature’. It is a more universal ‘environment’ which encompasses physical realities and social constructions such as family dinners or office buildings. For instance, if the medium we’re examining is the lightbulb, then its message is how we now think about time and day. Because of the lightbulb we were able to change our relationship to the physical environment (we could now see at midnight just like we could at noon) and ou
