McLuhan Site

McLuhan and the Gutenburg Galaxy

who was Marshall McLuhan?

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James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture

"The Medium is the Message" simply means that the content - though playing a role - is not the message, but the medium, which contains that content, is the message. For example, it is not the television (TV) commercial that is the message, but the fact that this type of commercial is only available on TV and cannot exist - in the way it does - without the medium of TV. This preordained shape is the message, rather than the commercial being the message.

McLuhan also devised the theory of every medium being either hot - high definition and non-participatory mediums such as radio or film - or cool - participatory mediums such as TV and the Internet. McLuhan also said that new mediums are derived from the existing ones. TV evolved from radio. The Internet is born of TV.

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"If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness? "

In statements like this, McLuhan both announces the existence of a global village, another word he is credited for coining, and predicts the intensification of the world community to its present expression. All of this was done in the early 1960s at a time when television was still in its infancy, and the personal computer was almost twenty years into the future.

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This semester, I want to explore the craft of telling a story - not just get lost in the current medium of choice.Yes, the medium is important but, it isn't, unto itself, the point. It is both what you have to say, and how you choose to tell it. Understanding our media.

When McLuhan said "The Medium is the Message"
Was he saying - The medium defines the message?

opinions ?? - hersh

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