The Medium is the message - explore what Marshall McLuhan meant by Essay

The Medium is the message - explore what Marshall McLuhan meant by this statement, tie it to ways the Internet and telecommunica - Essay Example The medium is the message as a metaphor is important in understanding the new electronic media as well. One could well argue that the medium is the unconscious of the media. Every medium is encrypted with its own messages which in turn substantially influence the message or the content. It is through analyzing the shift from traditional media to the new electronic media; McLuhan understood the nuances of medium as the message. The purpose of the essay is to examine the major postulates of McLuhan’s theoretical leap and some of the responses to from other scholars against the new developments in media of the present world. McLuhan’s Conception of Medium Although, the sentence ‘medium is the message’ is apparently very simple; it has many complex connotations. At first, it is just equating the medium with the message. Secondly but most importantly, if medium is the message, all other messages become secondary or non-messages. Therefore, it stipulates that the medium is the primary message and whatever message is inscripted on it is not substantial or exist only in permanent reference to the message of the medium. McLuhan does not negate the existence of the message of the content; therefore, he asserts that â€Å"although the medium is the message, the controls go beyond the programming. The restraints are always directed to the ‘content’, which is always another medium† (305). It means that the message of the medium is primary and the message of the content withstand only with reference to the message. It is important to remember that every medium is the extension of human capabilities and different mediums alters different human capabilities in different ways. Medium is what is form in literature; it is not just capturing the content but reproduces it in many ways. As we cannot understand an art work without deconstructing the form, the message of a media can only be understood when we deconstruct the politics of i ts medium. It is widely observed that the communication revolution in the technological sphere has not yet turned out to be a communication revolution in the real world. Although, there exist actual potentials for disseminating information which is crucial to enhance democracy among the broad masses, the internet media world has not advanced much in this line. Not only the media has failed in deepening democracy in general but also is unable to substantiate democracy within itself. It is because of the fact that as a medium the new information communication technologies are necessarily fragmented and not amenable to deep contemplation. By and large, global media is controlled the big corporations which are even more wealthy than a number of countries in the Global South. The much celebrated ‘marketplace of ideas’ is no more considered as free as it appears. It is not just because of the fact that American media conglomerates have more corporate and monitory power. On th e other hand, the new media technologies as medium are highly amenable to corporatization and monopolization. Therefore, we never have a media world without monopolies; one monopoly will always be replaces with another. The emergence of terms such as public service broadcasting, alternative media, citizen’s journalism, and independent media centers and so on denotes both the phenomenal corporatization of media and the ongoing global