"The Material Medium"

I guess the first thing that I have to say is WOW! I think that if I didn’t know that The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan was written over 40 years ago I would have read/absorbed the information differently. It seemed like these passages were ahead of their time. I wonder what he would have to say about today; especially with the internet and the connection of people worldwide.

Well now that I got that out of the way I can talk about some of the passages that I found either interesting or confusing. These passages were very hard to follow and read but the summary on Wikipedia helped.
The first quote that I found interesting was when Marshall McLuhan in the first paragraph said that any medium is an extension of ourselves. I totally agree, especially in writing. It allows a person to collect and put their thoughts on paper and (like in this class) show other people.

One thing (I am worried it is one of the main points of his passage) that I was confused with was the comparison with the light bulb. It was hard to follow his examples and hard to make some of his connections.

Another passage that commented on what we have talked about over the course of this class was by Napoleon (pg. 63). He said, “Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” This comment attributes to the fact that words are very powerful. It also shows how some people can use words to have control over or command legions of people (an example may be Hitler).


“We are as numb in our new electric world as the native involved in our literate and mechanical culture” (pg. 64). This quote really stuck out to me because I feel like this all the time. I finally learn to master some kind of technology or technique just to find out that it has already been outdated or obsolete. This is especially seen with computers and cell phones. You can watch movies from the early 90s to see the characters using cell phones that are as big as their heads. Or when they first came out with computers they were the size of a room in a house. I know that these examples occurred over many years but I just feel like I can never keep up with technology. I always hear my older family members complain about how they don’t know how to use technology or for example don’t know how to turn off televisions or cell phones. I don’t even want to imagine what I am not going to be able to do if I eventually become a parent or a grandparent.

The last thing that maybe stuck out to me the most was at the very end of The Medium is the Message. The psychologist C.G. Jung wrote, “….. Because living constantly in the atmosphere of slaves, he became infected through the unconscious with their psychology. No one can shield himself from such an influence.” I want to take out the word slave and put in the word technology. I think that quote encompasses our lifestyle. Nobody in this country can go through a day without using some type of technology. Nobody can be uninfluenced by the world of technology that surrounds each and every one of us every day.