Medium is the Message

No one had anticipated that former President Al Gore’s slideshow in ‘An inconvenient Truth’ on global warming would attract the attention of the public and would land him a nobel prize for his works. But the show raised many questions among the public whether human activities are causing global warming or is it natural to have an increase in temperature.

In the 1960s, a professor at University of Toronto raised somewhat similar questions and his work ‘Understanding Media’ was just as hit as ‘An inconvenient Truth’ was. His theory focused on understanding the media ecologically. McLuhan tried to convey that:

The medium is the message.

We might find a variety of shows on TV but the focus of all of them has always been the medium (TV). Without deciphering media as an environment we cannot understand social and cultural changes. McLuhan differs from view that our technological creation will someday turn against us but believes that it is a day to day gradual process that we might not even notice. When a new medium enters society we realize its novelty for a period of time and gradually starts adopting it over time.

Critics of Gore’s work claim that there is no 1 to 1 relationship with human activities and climate change rather there are complex factors involved. Similarly, if we witness a direct change in our behavior with respect to medium, we might take notice.

McLuhan divided human history in 4 stages based on developments in the media.

The Tribal Age had requirements of better hearing capabilities. Due to omnidirectional quality of sound it was pretty easy for a human to be aware of his surroundings and avoid danger.

Then with the invention of the alphabet the history transited to the Age of Literacy. As the alphabets were to be perceived by visual sense, hearing’s value diminished. Words were no longer alive and were saved in written forms. Proofs were based on written documents and written words became the source of information.

With the printing press, the world moved to The Print Age and mass production of identical products took place. It was at this stage that nationalism evolved and people started adopting one national language instead of regional tongues.

Then in The Electronic Age, the auditory senses gained value again. The distances were removed and the world took the form of a global village. Every person’s matter became someone else’s business and people became responsible for what they perceive instead of what has been conveyed.

The Digital Age is wholly electronic and the mass age of electronic media is getting highly personalized.

Neil Postman, who founded the media ecology program at New York University was seen by many as McLuhan’s heir apparent. He however differs from McLuhan and holds the idea that there’s no point in studying media ecology unless done in a moral context.

Postman had the view that every new technology gives us something but also takes something, it’s never one sided. And he raised questions about the consequences of adopting new technology.

According to Postman, TV is detrimental to society as it changes the form of information:

“from discursive to non discursive, from propositional to presentational and from rationalistic to emotive.”

The legacy of Postman can be defined by 3 questions.

1. What is the problem to which technology is the solution?

2. Whose problem is it?

3. If there is a serious problem, what other problems will be created in order to solve it?

Postman pondered whether the need for technological progress was becoming more worthy than humane and if we can substitute information with wisdom.

Louis Pasteur and McLuhan both had the ‘invisible greatest enemy’ but Pasteur was a scientist and was able to give evidence of his claims meanwhile McLuhan’s theory suggests objectivity without scientific evidence. This led to harsh criticism from the scholarly community. Similarly George Gordon from Fordham University criticized McLuhan’s work due to absence of inductive or deductive proofs of theory and some statements such as the Phonetic Alphabet created Greek Philosophy.

His biographers tend to agree that he had deep faith in Christianity and was a practicing christian. And his works might be affected by his beliefs which makes it difficult to take his ideas seriously.

On the other hand, there have been questions about what if he’s right? Because we see many theories that seem lunatic in their times but are proven later. One thing is quite clear, no one ever raised the questions in human minds about media ecology like McLuhan did with his catchy statements.

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Photo by Rodolfo Clix from Pexels

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