How the Medium is the Message in the Unconscious of `America Online'

Abstract

This article explores McLuhan's famous slogan `the medium is the message' as a point of departure for examining current views of the nature of the new electronic media understood as a revolutionary form, associated with a new (`post-modern') stage of society. It argues that this slogan packs into itself more layers of meaning than he was able to articulate in a complex and nuanced theory of the media. It suggests that McLuhan's work constructs a productive idea of a media unconscious. It shows in detail how `messages' are encoded in new visual forms associated with the new electronic media, using the logo of `America Online' (AOL), an internet provider, as exemplary text. This logo carries implicit messages about the nature of these media, in a kind of dialogue with McLuhan. Messages and dialogue alike need a new space in which they can occur: a theory of unconscious dimensions of media.