“Marshall McLuhan: ‘The Medium is the Message,’ by Todd Kappelman (2001)

Todd Kappelman’s article for Probe Ministries, "Marshall McLuhan: 'The Medium is the Message,' is an overview of a selection of Marshall McLuhan’s thoughts regarding technology and society. McLuhan, who the article describes as "the high priest of pop-culture (Kappelman 1)" was a Christian, who seems to have been weary of the effects that technology had and would have on people.

One of the first ideas that Kappelman discusses is a “global village,” a term created by McLuhan that refers to a world community that shares a single consciousness. McLuhan believed that the global village put more emphasis on the technology that it has created and the message via that technology than religion. He came up with this term in the 1960’s; now that most people have access to the Internet, the global village is even more evident (1-2). Nowadays, people are constantly connected, and they learn of events that happen around the world in real time. In fact, many people (like myself) feel lost when they don’t have access to the Internet.

Next, the article discusses American advertising, which McLuhan discussed in his 1951 book, The Mechanical Bride. McLuhan wrote that it's the advertiser’s goal to “manipulate, exploit, and control the individual (2).” Companies make people believe that they need a certain product. They convert women into objects and force products upon them that will supposedly make them more desirable to men. This is one topic that really angers me! We have become so conditioned by the media’s portrayal of women that we don’t realize how offended we should be. Companies try to tell us that if we buy their products, we will look like the women in their ads, which are photoshoped images and unobtainable goals. No wonder so many girls have self-esteem and self-image issues! I'll get back on track...

The next topics in the article are extensions and amputations. “An extension occurs when an individual or society makes or uses something in a way that extends the range of the human body and mind in a fashion that is new (3).” For example, the car is an extension of the foot. With the technology of the automobile, people can get places quicker than they could on foot. However, with extensions come amputations, or a loss. With the example of the automobile, society walks less. In general, society is lazier, fatter (although other factors certainly contribute to this). Another negative aspect of the automobile is pollution and fatalities caused by car accidents (3-4).

The interesting point that McLuhan makes about extensions and amputations is that society focuses on the extensions and tends to ignore the amputations. We tend to focus on the progress and sweep the negativities under the rug. One thing that I hadn’t thought of before was that fatalities associated with car accidents would most likely be completely diminished if the speed limit was reduced to 20 mph. However, this will likely never happen because it’s more important for people to arrive at their destinations quickly. How sad (4)!

In his final work, The Global Village (1989), McLuhan developed four questions for us to ask when analyzing media:

1. “What does it extend?”
2. “What does it make obsolete?”
3. “What is retrieved?”
4. "What does the technology reverse into if it is over-extended (5)?"
   

Let’s apply this tetrad to the Internet:

1. The brain? The eyes? Consciousness
2. Print media; socializing with “real” people
3. Awareness, sense of community
4. An overextension of the Internet results in society longing for relationships with real people, conversations, company…

Works Cited

Kappelman, Todd. "Marshall McLuhan: 'The Medium is the Message.' Probe Ministries International, 2001. 25 September 2009 http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html>