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Why The Medium Is The Message
Introduction
With contemporary epistemology reformatted to 30-second TikTok videos Marshall McLuhan’s catchphrase “the medium is the message” is more relevant today than ever before. Who was Marshall McLuhan, what was he talking about when he said “the medium is the message,” and how does his catchy phrase relate to contemporary epistemology?
McLuhan, the quintessential Canadian philosopher, explored how media shapes human thought—and, by extension, our sense of reality versus opinion. He explained how books, “typographic information,” exploded with the printing press and made the collective organism that is humanity way smarter, because reading requires time, deliberation, and consideration. But he warned that electricity was moving information so goddamn fast with new media like television that brains were losing the cognitive benefits of reading—instead, they were getting lazy and falling victim to media magic.
McLuhan feared that the acceleration of media would turn the general population into “dumbass motherfuckers,” as George Carlin put it in his 2005 comedy set Life Is Worth Losing. McLuhan never explicitly called people stupid because he was, after all, a polite Canadian.
Reading Is Fun
When your eyes move from word to word, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, words come alive. Your brain processes the words and generates the writer’s voice, rendering it into images, arguments, and concepts. You push back where opinions differ, or embrace the didactic on offer. According to McLuhan, reading is a cool medium that provides abstracted information, requiring active engagement and contribution to the ideas being transcoded. McLuhan emphasized the need for time to process words. On the flip side, pictures and moving media are hot mediums that transcode copious amounts of information instantaneously. Consider the information exchange with a photograph of a person standing. If the person has impeccable posture, you perceive this individual as strong and mighty. If the person is slouched and aged, you perceive them as weak and vulnerable. Hot mediums like images and videos offer so much definition that brains simply absorb a stream of information in crystal-clear visual resolution. Like radio, reading is a cool medium—it forces the brain to engage, analyze, and critically process ideas against one’s own moral framework. Hot videos allow little time for contemplation, and can remix content into completely new and disconnected meaning. Where cool media like reading allow time for critical thinking, hot media are sensory triggers: pictures of pretty girls and boys, seductive music, and fresh scents – creating immediate neurological responses that flood brains with dopamine and serotonin.
Epistemology
Epistemology was central to McLuhan’s discourse because he was deeply concerned with the collective cognitive capacity of humans to effectively understand their environments. McLuhan’s disciple Neil Postman wrote extensively on the social implications of the evolving media ecosystem. Postman’s delectable 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business offers an excellent study of “the medium is the message” in politics and public discourse. In the book, Postman showcases how a political debate unfolds in written vs televised form. Provided the arguments are coherent and well structured, reading not only affords the reader time to comprehensively consume and critique the messages provided, it does so regardless of the physical appearance of the writer/politician. Imagine a 300 lb. politician engaging in a televised debate! No matter how articulate, this large lad wouldn’t stand a chance against the archetypal politician of today: actors with buttery smooth voices, thick lush hair, pretty eyes and pearly white teeth, seducing everyone into everything. With the instantaneous medium of video, viewers fall victim to their evolutionary psychology, which is to say they are easily seduced by a pretty face.
The Global Village
Remember when there was one TV in your house (ask your parents) and advertisements cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce? McLuhan foresaw humanity morphing into the tribal global village, interconnected by electricity, screens and hot media, reacting like a unified tribal organism. Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are reincarnations of cable television, except they have escaped the regulatory oversight that governments used to protect the masses from nefarious players like the Russians. Now that social platforms have supplanted cable news of yesteryears, the new baseball bat is media and smart phones.
The Coldwar Never Ended
We must not forget that The Cold War never ended and that Russia is happy to see America slide into chaos. The 2016 presidential race was extremely unique because of the evolving media ecosystem, not only did Trump have an all-star team of strategists who masterfully managed the message—but he also did an amazing job of seducing the masses with a perpetual feedback loop of lies. And with zero US government oversight, the Russians bought ad space on Facebook where they remixed images of Jesus arm wrestling Satan, and sent Trump to power.
In Conclusion
The medium is the message is an insightful catchphrase that reinforces the importance of rationalizing the media mediums we consume. Unfortunately, we didn’t heed McLuhan’s warnings – that brains need time to effectively transcode media. Instead, the global village and interconnected network of human brains embraced electronic media, which resulted in contemporary epistemology reformatted into 30 second TikTok videos. And as Postman showcased, public discourse in the age of show business is pure amusement, much like a Trump rally. Like a seduction artist picks up a pretty girl with a neg (a negative demeaning comment meant to wear down one’s self-esteem) Trump embraced Russia and GOP media operatives. They have all collectively sharpened their baseball bats and hacked the minds of the masses. And what did Trump do when he got to office? He implemented tax breaks for his wealthy benefactors, and in an unfortunate twist of irony, he cut social services for the very voters who elected him.