Medium is the Message

‘It is the medium that shapes and controls the scales and form of human association and action.’

- Marshal McLuhan

Marshal McLuhan is an eccentric, controversial, yet contemporary intellectual, who in my opinion explains his theories based more upon opinion than fact. He explains how electric modes of communication shapes us as human beings. In one of his most famous quotes, "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." supports this idea as well as the idea that new technologies have decreased the interaction between man and his environment. Yet, his idea of the 'medium' that has shaped and 'controlled.. human association and action' is explained as a draw back in society and a 'trap for your attention', https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw, Marshal McLuhan Lecture 1977.

Does this mean, according to McLuhan, that everything is a Medium? Everything in our lifetime shapes us as human beings for example, education, work prospects, friends and family, the news and media, however for McLuhan to state the light bulb as a medium blurs the concept of media and the concept of a tool in my opinion. If we accept his ideology of medium, we are accepting that everything is a medium.

 Are we as human beings a medium? If so, what do we blame the forms of human association and action on? Do we blame the 2011 UK Riots on the BBM (Blackberry Messenger) network like the media did? Or do we blame it on the criminals as human beings? 

Teens have turned to social media and technology due to crime rates increasing, thus leading to their parents protecting them from the outside world where they’re “not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.” Its Complicated; The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Danah Boyd citied in

http://www.wired.com/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/ 2014. 

However, by ‘moving it online’ have we unwittingly started a cycle where teens use social media and technology as a place to organise crime similar to the use of BBM in the 2011 UK Riots. This then questions are guardians/carers to blame due to trying to protect their teens from criminals, forcing them to stay indoors with only technology as a source of entertainment. Media and the news also play a big part in human association and action, for example, this is where guardians/carers get their information about the crimes where the media have, “began delivering a metronomic diet of horrifying but rare child-abduction stories, and parents shortened the leash on their kids”, Danah Boyd, 2014, Its Complicated; The Social Lives of Networked Teens.