Marshall Mcluhan 's The Medium Is The Massage

One of the overall concerns regarding easily accessible technology is our dependency on it. When we take a closer look, we see an interesting dynamic: we feel a sense of isolation and danger if we are without our technology, so much so that we risk even further greater danger (literally and figuratively)

We as people rely on technology too much by expecting the machine to do something by the click of a button and get angry when the machinery isn’t working. At the beginning technology wasn’t thought of too much but at this point technology is getting people addicted from kids to the elderly.

Mass media is effective in teaching us what we “should” look like. Women should be thin. Men should be muscular. The skinny and muscular ideals portrayed in advertising encourage men and women to look a certain way. The depiction of the female ideal has helped shaped society’s perspectives about beauty. The media pushes you to “improve your body” by buying their products but soon the road to a skinny and toned body leads to a self destructive path of self hatred. The powerful ideas that the media transmits through words, images, and movement can have lasting impacts on the human brain, affecting how we think and

In Chapter six of Practices of Looking theorist Michael McLuhan stated during the 1960’s that “a medium is any extension of ourselves through a technological form”. He also believed that it is a way in which individuals extend their bodies in processes of communication, which despite him writing in the 1960’s is highly relevant in contemporary society. The chapter discusses how people rank modes of media in terms of importance. For instance, an article on Facebook or seen on a social networking platform may not be as highly regarded by the average viewer, as it can be perceived as not being credible. Yet, a newspaper article is often held in a higher esteem.

A major modern problem with the media is the sublimation of, and reaffirmation of, stereotypical female gender roles. “The media treats women like shit” (Cho). Which is a serious issue because of Marshall McLuhan’s famous words, “The Medium is the Message” (Warwick). The medium up for discussion is the media, which can be fundamentally defined as the most significant “single source of information that people have today (Katz). Therefore, in order to understand “what’s going on in our society” (Katz) it is “absolutely imperative to “understand media” (Katz). Media and technology are “shaping our politics, our national discourse and most of all, they’re shaping our children’s brains, lives and emotions” (Steyer). Caroline Heldman, PhD, and

Your television and computer are controlling every choice you make. Scary thought? Everyday Americans log into their computer or turn on their TV and are fed information from our trusted media. In fact, a Marshall survey states, “By 2015, it is estimated that Americans will consume both traditional and digital media for over 1.7 trillion hours, an average of approximately 5 and a half hours per person per day.” Unknowingly at times, we are allowing our media to shape the choices we make, the ways we see others, and the way we view ourselves. With most of Americans unaware of the media's control on their choices and views, this can be an alarming realization. Media has a major impact on multiple parts of our society.

Media is everywhere, a social aspect so critical to the economics of the United States often we do not even notice it’s constant presence. Advertisement is unescapable, thus can be a dangerous weapon. Looking at the media in the United States, one can be certain that current trends and standards are used as marketing tools to suggest whatever is being sold or reported on adds value to your life. Children grow up with false ideals of beauty, success, love, and happiness as a response to the overflow of product placement and media coverage in the country. From a very young age people begin to internalize these social constructions blasted by the media and as children begin to age and mature we see these false ideals of happiness become measures of success in life.

Despite being written in the 1960s and 1980s, the theories outlined in Marshall McLuhan’s work “The Medium is the Message” and Langdon Winner’s work “Do Artifacts Have Politics” are still applicable today, even with the subsequent forms of technology and media that have been introduced to modern society. Such new forms of media, specifically the mobile phone, are still technological and political artifacts and as a result, have a significant influence on society. However, the extent to which the mobile phone is political and its role in shaping media technology is a point of complexity that is crucial to examine. With careful consideration of both Winner and McLuhan’s theories, we can infer that the mobile phone is yet another artifact containing

In contrast Marshall McLuhan described how he believed that medium is literally the message. "The Medium" is a theory made by McLuhan himself as he expressed that a medium is any augmentation of ourselves. If McLuhan was a live today he would considered the social media as a median. The message, McLuhan clarifies, is the change that is brought into human social life. Along these lines, the medium is the message, as per McLuhan, implies that the aftereffects of an adjustment in human culture is brought about by a recently presented innovation. McLuhan keeps on indicating out that society ought not get to be occupied by the substance, which is not the same as the

Media is always an alternative story. Media is no longer being a part of the culture, but it creates cultures. In "Convergence Culture", Jenkins’s claim that “when people take media into their hands, the results can be wonderfully creative; they can also be bad news for all involved” (para. 39). Indeed, media brought human so many benefits and profit. However, like what Jenkin said, they can be the problem for the society. For me, if put two sides of the media’s outcome in the balance it would always be equal. Due to the development of technology, from first black-white television to the smart phone with many functions. With the phone on hand, people can connect to everyone, watch, listen, and learn. So who would control our activities on

In The Medium Is the Message by Marshall McLuhan, he explores new media in its most original, basic and pure way as an object, furthermore, he use the idea of the medium itself carries the message rather than the message, furthermore, to analyze how new media influence in the society. At the end, McLuhan explain the role of broadcast television (as a new medium) and how television itself become a “fixed charge” in people’s day-to-day living which we simply cannot live without it. (Marshall McLuhan 1962, p.209) Base on Mcluhan’s notion of how a medium formed in the past, if the idea still apply to the mass communication media nowaday as the media themselves shape the society regardless of the content it carries, or there is a new relation

In 1970, he published The Consumer Society, which he shed light on the subject and object of consumption, around which contemporary societies are organized. A few years later, he published Simulacra and Simulation, and implemented the hyper reality, by which objects are to be false and hidden from the truth. Baudrillard, an early admirer of McLuhan, expands his research and analysis on McLuhan’s idea that the ‘the medium is the message’ - distancing and separating from the Marxism. By “ the medium is the message”, McLuhans describes that the ‘real message that the radio and television deliver…is not in the images that it transmits but rather the new mode of perception that it imposes on traditional group and family structure’ (Baudrillard 1983:187). In other words, it is, in fact, through the medium which a message shaped the perception of people, and not vice-versa. McLuhans warned us about the new medium effects, which it is often something unheard of in the early 18th century, since the medium, itself, influences society. Therefore, media and its medium mediate our experience without us noticing it, and Baudrillard alarms us about it.

To begin, just imagine how many times a day we encounter some sort of media. It is almost impossible to avoid it, which is why media plays such an enormous role in our lives. Every day we see glamorous images of people that depict a perfect reality. It may or may not come as a surprise that these media outlets affect the way we think about our lives and even the events that we are able to remember. Since people have a numerous amount of options when it comes to entertainment, there is so much competing going on that the stories can be over glamorized. ” “Entertainment has superseded the provision of information; human interest has supplanted the public interest; measured judgement has succumbed to sensationalism.”

Self-image is very important in today’s society. Everyone cares about how they look, dress, how much they weigh, etc. There is no doubt that the media plays a big role in how people view themselves. From television and magazines to social media, they all portray a self-image that is unattainable. Trying to achieve this self-image can potentially have many consequences in people’s lives. These consequences can be anything from a low self-esteem to a seriously unhealthy eating disorder. This paper will show exactly how the media influences people’s self-image. Showing how the media influences women, men, children and adolescents will help people to learn as a society what needs to be done to change these unrealistic and unattainable appearances that are portrayed in the media.

“The medium is the message,” uttered by the late media scholar and theorist Marshall McLuhan, and they have been revered and dissected ever since they were spoken. There has been several different interpretations on the premise of McLuhan’s words, and the meaning behind them. The best way to start unraveling his theory, is to get a general understanding of the terms used in his famous quote. In McLuhan’s own words, a medium is simply “an extension of ourselves.” Simply put the medium personifies or enhances what we as humans cannot do on our own. In a mass media perspective this means the use of technology including radio, television, and the Internet to project our thoughts, feelings, and senses (Frederman) . Finally, it is important to