Understanding the Message of Understanding Media

Abstract

ABSTRACTUnderstanding Media is Marshall McLuhan’s most influential book, and the work that is most central to the field of media ecology. The first chapter is devoted to his most important statement, the medium is the message, an aphorism that contains multiple meanings that need to be unpacked. For example, it serves as a call to pay attention to the media, symbols systems, and technologies that form our invisible environment, which requires a reversal of figure-ground relationships. We generally ignore the medium or technology and only pay attention to its content or the way that it is used, but it is the medium that has the greater impact. McLuhan emphasizes the singular term medium, rather than the plural media, because each medium has a message of its own, that is, a particular bias that differs from the biases of other media. The relationship between medium and content is asymmetrical, that of environment and its contents, and there can be no content without there first being a medium that is used to construct a message. The introduction of new media motivate the creation of new content, and media themselves may be incorporated into the content of other media. As environments, media affect the way that we know our world, and how we act upon it, influencing us as individuals and collectively as societies and cultures.