The Medium's Message and the Message's Message

Throughout our early lives, we are taught to focus on content. “What does this mean? What is the author trying to say?” We are instructed to write rhetorical analyses outlining the major meanings behind a text. Not once can I remember, before my time at Berkeley, an occasion in which the medium itself played any role whatsoever in these proceedings. Thus, I never bothered to consider what it really meant that I, or anyone else, read The Great Gatsby on the musty, yellowed pages of a book.

This is not to say that children are blissfully unaware that technology has gone through many changes in medium, but that they are never encouraged to look for importance in the media themselves. As McLuhan points out, children aren’t encouraged to do very much at all when they interact with technology. They are plopped in front of the TV just to give them something to do, to keep them quiet. Then society is confused as to why so many kids have difficulty with reading.

Although I do agree with McLuhan that the medium itself contains its own message, I don’t believe that we may say that content is secondary or unimportant. In the grand scheme of things, yes, the move from print to digital media has a bigger influence than if I choose to read a book or a Kindle. But at the individual level, I think that content plays a major role. I myself find that I have greater ease reading online than I do in books. But I’m not convinced that this is the case only because the media are different. I think that I am better able to find texts to fit my interests online, when I have search engines and decades of information at my disposal. In a book, there is only one text; it only goes in one direction. If it interests me, that’s great. But if it doesn’t, I’m out of luck until I find another physical text.

The one example that caught my attention was his explanation as to how television has caused to children to be more sexually open. He claims that “TV tattoos its message directly on our skins, it renders clothing obsolescent and a barrier…” Now, this might just be me, but I have never felt the need to shed my clothing while watching TV. I feel like this is a bit of a stretch and don’t see where the logic lines up. If I were to make a case for the explosion of sexual expression I would point to the adult content children are exposed to by TV that they never would have had access to before (something that McLuhan actually mentions in his interview).  I can definitely see how the medium has a message, but I will contend that the message has a message as well.