Ideologies on the Media

Marshall McLuhan is a scholar of the 1900s. He wrote several books in his time and is known for much of his works. I of course did not even know he existed until my first year of university. I never learned of him during high school, but I am glad I have learned about him now. I am guessing that he was never a topic in high school because there were not many media courses at my school. Marshal McLuhan wrote about more than just the media, but that was how I was introduced to him. I believe that his ideologies are correct about media, because they do make a lot of sense. For example Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man is a famous book written by McLuhan that discusses how the media works and its impact on us.

McLuhan states in his book that "the medium is the message". What he means by “Medium” is that it refers to the mass media of communications. For example the radio, television, the press, the Internet, newspapers, magazines and other forms of media that revolve around us. I believe what McLuhan is trying to say is that all of these media forms are what bring us together. I also see it as a massive library filled with information where we can interpret that information in our own ways. Being an advertisement on television or an article in a magazine there is a message within those mediums, and I believe that this is what McLuhan means.

The title of the book also has meaning. The title once again is Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McLuhan uses the term “extension” but what does he mean by this? I was told by my professor that McLuhan means that the media is our extension. He uses extension because he is speaking about the extension of our eyes and ears. If you think about this it actually makes a lot of sense. With the media we know almost everything that is going on around us, but if the media were not available then we would not know what was happening across the world almost instantly. This is how our eyes and ears extend how we can see and hear things now that we could never see and hear before. For example “culture” we can see all kinds of different cultures and learn about them just by turning on the television or going onto the Internet. This is what McLuhan means by his ideologies, and I do agree with them because they do make absolute sense in my opinion. I also think that McLuhan was quick on noticing how the media will affect us. McLuhan’s book was published in 1964 and the Ideologies in his book still have a significant influence in today’s society more that 40 years later.

A quote from his book: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

"In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." (McLuhan 7)

Works Cited

Federman, Mark. "What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message?." individual.utoronto.ca. Web. 8 Oct 2009. <http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm>.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964. Print.