The Medium Is the Message

"Today when we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from the bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human expression, we have only to visit a society where that particular form has not been felt, or a historical period in which it was unknown." Marshall McLuhan is a fascinating individual. I read a brief article in the book, "The New Media Reader", written by McLuhan, that opened my mind to different ideas about how I precieve different mediums. His ideas in his article titled, "The Medium Is the Message", are interesting, to say the very least. McLuhan has a certain style of writing about present technology and how it compares to earlier technology. Aside from this, he also has a very strong belief that any form of media is always a combination of another media. I fully agree with his concept. Here are a few pictures of differnt mediums doing more than one task at the same time.

Today, almost all media is made up of another media, from television, to IPods. I tried thinking outside the box by going as far back as books, in saying that this is one form of media that content is not another media. In some cases this point would be valid, but nowadays, there are so many books that contain works by a collaboration of different authors that I am convinced that argument will soon no longer exist. McLuhan also brought up a point that technology acts as an extension to our body. I thought this was a very original and clever way of forming an idea that so many others have also had, but could never articulate in this fashion. I have heard people say technology influences society, and I have heard people talk about the positives and negatives in how technology advances so rapidly. I have yet to hear anyone argue McLuhan's argument, and yet I see his argument in so many other's. I find this to be ironic, considering one of his main arguments was how no media is without some form of another media. Does this have the same affect with ideas?