The Message is the Medium

Here's the first in a series of thoughts looking toward the new media panel at CoSIDA. Feedback to the email address is encouraged.

A generation had its opinion formed by Marshall McLuhan's theories. His post-postmortem website even starts with a link labeled "Enter the Medium". I've been more a Neill Postmann follower (as in Amusing Ourselves to ), and working this past spring in the Sports Media Relations class I've come to a new point of view. This may not be original -- I didn't google the snot out of it to check -- but the realization was strong and personal.

McLuhan was right in what I call the Atomic Era; that post-Second World War time from 1945 until the mid-1990s where we faced new technologies and the realization that for the first time in human history we really did have the capacity to end it all. Television -- the primary medium of which he spoke -- became a message in and of itself. It changed everything.

One could argue this continues today with the internet -- a distribution medium that becomes a message and a purpose into itself. Just look at social networking as a prime example.

But why?

Various mediums do influence and shape the way the message is imparted. McLuhan lived and thought far ahead of his time, but I don't think he could possibly have seen a day in which the means of distribution could become one. Television brought together picture and sound in real time, pretty jarring.

Still, a newspaper by its nature is flatland, to use Edward Tufte's term. What happens when the newspaper -- the written word -- appears on your screen that brings you color photos, moving images, sound and streams of raw data.

McLuhan lived in a world with a rainbow -- a spectrum of specific wavelengths that did specific things, albeit in new and wonderfully subversive ways to the culture at large.

We live in a time where that prism -- the medium -- is removed; all the modes of communication run together into a pure beam of light.

Look, I love newspapers and still subscribe to them. Same for news weeklies. Until someone comes up with a better user interface for the toilet, one that's fully compliant with the first 10,000 feet of commercial flight and independent of power supplies, I'll keep using them. That doesn't mean I don't RSS 40-50 news sources, use aggregators and spiders to harvest news and search and participate in Web 2.0 communities.

I do it all for the same reason we all do -- I'm looking for a message; the medium doesn't matter any more. I'll take my news on trees or flickering LCDs; I'll watch my content on a CRT, a plasma screen or a LCD phone; I'll listen to the voices over analog waves, digital downloads or in my head.

Therefore, those that command the message -- who form it, set its agenda, choose its content -- are the ones who shall rule the medium. Content is king.

More as it develops, but now I want to put my attention on Aurelija Miseviciute, who's playing in the NCAA semis about 100 miles away from my computer. But I can watch by streaming video, essentially warping space to a niche market -- people interested in Arkansas women's tennis -- that McLuhan could not imagine. He might argue the medium made it possible. OK, but that's to the credit of a bunch of engineers -- perhaps Al Gore? I seek the message, and all the medium just allows me to save $3.95 a gallon and the transit time.