Electronic Technology In Marshall Mcluhan's The Medium Is The Massage

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“The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur” (A.N Whitehead). Marshall Mcluhan, the author of The Medium is the Massage, would agree to this and add that electronic technology is “reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life” (McLuhan, 8). He would argue that society has always been shaped by the medium of the media affecting everything from government to family, leaving no part of us untouched. Using the alphabet for example, is a technology which is absorbed at a very early age in a completely unaware manner. “Words and the meaning of words predispose the child to think and act automatically in certain ways” (McLuhan, 8). McLuhan would add that electronic technology does this in the exact same way, as it encourages unification, involvement, and commitment. As we grow to learn more about each other, “[w]e have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other” (McLuhan, 24). If we don’t conform McLuhan believes we will eventually enter into an “Age of Anxiety”, where we “... do today’s job with yesterday’s tools - with yesterday’s concepts” (McLuhan, 9). This causes us to live in a rear view mirror society, and McLuhan says one must use tools of the present to make sense of the present. George Orwell author of 1984 would have a lot to say about this particular topic for instance, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the
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