McLuhan (1964), "The Medium is the Message"

1. Medium is the message

McLuhan (1964) argues that changes in media format structure and restructure society. When societies transitioned from spoken communication to written communication, for example, McLuhan (1964) argues that the grid-like structure of printed text influenced societies to reorganize villages into similarly grid-like structures with houses arranged along streets and around city blocks.

McLuhan (1964) believed that the temptation to argue differences within a medium distracted us from the larger issue of the media itself. For example, he asserted that arguments about differences between television shows distracted us from the way that television as a medium was restructuring our society as a "global village."

The "global village" concept is McLuhan's (1964) reference to the way that television showed us things happening around the world while distancing us from things happening in our own geographic neighborhood.

2. Media as extension

McLuhan (1964) saw media technologies as extensions of the human body.  Light, for example, extends the eyes, and radio extends the voice. With every extension, we gain something and lose something else. The invention of radio, for example, might render some forms of print media obsolete.

3. Rear-view mirror

McLuhan (1964) argued that most people understand the present as though looking through a rear-view mirror. In other words, most of society uses the past to interpret the present and future. Artists are able to innovate because they do not employ this rear-view perspective. Instead, they are able to look ahead to the future which allows them to create fresh and new ideas.

4. Hot and cool media

McLuhan (1964) divides media technologies into hot and cool. Hot media, he argues, saturates the consumer with information and discourages participation. Film, for example, is a hot medium because it is consumed in high-definition, saturates primarily one sense (the visual), and does not leave room for the viewer to contribute to the communication. Cool media, on the other hand, communications through less saturated communication and generally allows for other activities or participation. The telephone, for example, contributes sound to the user, but requires that the user participate in the production of that sound. McLuhan (1964) classified television as cool media, because (at least in 1964) its image was grain and low-resolution and it allowed users to do other things while it played in the background. This distinction between “hot” and “cool” dictates which types of content are suitable for that particular medium. “Hot” media created more passive consumers than “cool” media.