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Under statuhng Me&a The Eatenstom oJ Man by Marshall McLuhan ©1964

CHAPTER 1

The Medium is the Message

MARSHALL McCLUHAN

In a culture hke ours, long accustomed to splitting and dtvidmg all things as a means of control, it as sometimes a bat of a shock to be reminded that, in opera- tional and practical fact, the medium ts the message This is tamely to say that the pmsonal and social consequences of any medmm--that is, of any extension of our-

selves--result from the new scale that Is introduced into om affans by each exten-

sion of ourselves, or by any new technology. Thus, with automation, for example, the new patterns of human association tend to ehminate.jobs it is true That is the negative result Positively, automation creates roles for people, which is to say depth of involvement in theil wolk and human association that om preceding me- chamcal technology had destroyed Many people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message. In terms of the ways m whmh the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out corn-

flakes or Cadillacs The restructuring of human work and assocmtlon was shaped by the technique of fragmentation that is the essence of machine technology. The essence of automation technology is the opposite. It is integral and decenttahst m depth, JUSt as the machine was fragmentary, centlalist, and superficml m ats pat- terning of human relaUonshLps

The instance of the electric hght may prove illuminating in this connection. The electric hght is pure reformation It is a medium wÿthout a message, as it were, unless it as used to spell out some verbal ad or name This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the "content" of any medmm is always anothm medium The content of writing is speech, just as the wratten word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph If It is asked, "What is the content of speechg," it is necessaly to say, "It as an actual process of thought, whmh Is in itself nonver- bal." An abstract painting represents direct mamfestataon of creative thought proc-

esses as they might appear in computer desagns. What we are consadermg here, howevm, are the psychic and social consequences of the desagns or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes For the "message" of any medium or

technology is the change of scale or pace or pattmn that it mtloduces into human affairs. The railway dad not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road

into human socmty, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of pmvmus human functions, creating totally new kinds of cLties and new kinds of work and leisure This happened whether the raihvay funchoned in a tropical or a northern environ-

ment, and 1s quite independent of the freight or content of the lailway medium The airplane, on the other hand, by accelelating the rate of transpoltatlon, tends to dis- solve the railway form of city, politics, and association, quite independently of what the airplane is used for

Let us retuln to the electric light. Whether the light is being used fol brain sur- gery or night baseball is a matter of lndlffmence. It could be algued that these ac- tivities are In some way the "content" of the electric light, since they could not ex- ist without the electric light This fact merely underlines the point that "the me- dium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and folm of human association and action The content or uses of such media are

as diveise as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association Indeed, it IS only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium It is only today that industries have become aware of the various kinds of business in which they me engaged. When IBM discovered that it was not in the business of making office equipment or business machines, but that it was in the business of processing information, then it began to navigate with clear vision.

The Genelal Electric Company makes a consldelable poition of its profits from electric light bulbs and lighting systems It has not yet discovered that, quite as much as A.T &T., it is in the business of moving information

The electric light escapes attention as a communication medium just because it has no "content" And this makes It an invaluable instance of how people fail to study media at all

Fol it is not till the electric light is used to spell out some bland name that it is noticed as a medium Then it Is not the light but the "content" (or what is really another medium) that is noticed. The message of the electric light is like the mes- sage of electric power in Industry, totally ladical, pervasive, and decentralized For electric light and power are separate from their uses, yet they eliminate time and space factors in human association exactly as do radio, telegraph, telephone, and TV, creating involvement in depth

A fairly complete handbook for studying the extensions of man could be made up from selections flom Shakespeare Some might quibble about whether or not he was refelring to TV in these familiar lines flom Romeo a;idJuhet.

But sol0 what light through yonder window breaks? It speaks, and yet says nothing.

In Othello, which, as much as King Lear, is concelned with the torment of people transformed by illusions, there are these lines that bespeak Shakespeale's intuition of the tlansformlng powels of new media

Is there not charms By which the property of youth and maidhood May be abus'd? Have you not read Roderigo, Of some such thing9