Medium is the Message Essay

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“The medium is the message” is a concept formulated by Marshall McLuhan, which explains that a message must be imbedded in a type of medium, the specific relationship between the two establishes how the message is perceived or viewed by the audience. McLuhan proposes that the medium itself is the most important means of transferring the message as a whole, rather then the content disclosed on its own. ʻ...the ʻmessageʼ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs...ʼ (Understanding Media, McLuhan,1994, p.7) means the physical characteristics of the medium alter the interpretation of the message. A message would be nothing with out the medium and the medium would mean nothing without the message.
Neil Postman was the author of ʻAmusing Ourselves to Deathʼ which was released in 1985, in this book he describes the how information can be transformed and demeaned when presented through television. Postman stressed that education presented through television is not a practical means to expel information as the content can only be presented as is, and there is no ability to interact or question the information being presented to the audience, which is critical aspect of learning and that the entertainment of television overwrites and distorts the presence of any serious content. “..we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price.”
(Five Things We Need To Know About Technological Change, Postman,1998, p.5) states that technology introduces an equal amount of ʻconsʼ to the niche as intended ʻprosʼ in any technological advance scenario, this relates the to television in regards to transporting information, although the television is convenient and further flexible in transmitting the content to many outputs, such an advancement is compromised with the loss of quality which is taken away from the information.
Pierre Bourdieu a French sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher argues that social judgments are made and related to overall social value and position. This debate was conformed by conducting and analyzing information from many surveys, interviews and other mediums. This was done in an attempt to understand the psychology of this topic and how it relates to other content. The social judgments made by people to establish a social position and importance of something or someone else is yet another example of how the medium and the message relate to each other, this theory
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