In The Medium is the Massage, the argumentative book written by Marshall McLuhan, the ideas of how technology influences our society as opposed to past mediums are brought about. McLuhan calls upon the reader and particularly critics of new technologies such as the television, to reconsider technology as simply another medium to convey and communicate information to one another just as writing, reading, and language have done single-handedly in the past. He considers the introduction of new technologies to be another new environment for human beings to delve into and even labels the new technologies as the creators of “global villages” as the communities of the world become more connected to one another by the capabilities of technology. McLuhan also emphasizes his interpretation that mediums can be considered anything that broadens the abilities of human beings particularly by extending communication but also including items such as clothing or wheels as extensions of our capabilities. It is apparent throughout the argumentative novel that McLuhan is in support of new technologies as they increase the potential of mankind to have more ability to communicate with one another.
Personally, I find McLuhan’s argument to be significantly persuasive in the sense that his viewpoints correlate to my own in most ways. I find that his ideas of technology as another medium created by humankind to expand our capabilities in a positive sense that allows us to elaborate on our thinking and connect to the global community to be quite logical, a point I feel Sven Birkerts in The Gutenberg Elegies neglects to incorporate. Birkerts rather focuses on the harms of technology reducing our abilities through the dependence on technology that minimizes what we allow our mind to do instead of regarding technology as a tool to expand intelligence and the capabilities of the human race. In particular, one place where McLuhan’s argument is best presented is at the end of the novel where a drawing from “The New Yorker Magazine” is presented with a caption that states, “You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says the environment man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it … Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement are greater. We again live in a village.” (McLuhan 83) Through this text, McLuhan exhibits the importance of his belief that with the introduction of the medium of technology, specifically “TV and folk singing,” the global community can be closer together and interconnected as well as expanding the abilities of thought and action. Although I agree with this point, I feel that Birkerts would strongly counter this specific statement because he believes that this connection is rather negative as there is a lack of privacy that was once relevant when there was a dependence on literature rather than technology. In terms of the connectedness of the world, I personally find it to be a positive and would side with McLuhan’s ideas rather than Birkerts because the connectedness that was difficult to obtain before technology’s introduction enables society to be aware of the world around them through news broadcasts, social media, and other forms of technological communication. Overall, I agree with McLuhan in the sense that technology serves positive contributions to society, further countering Birkerts negative views on societies dependence on technology.
Furthermore, although I found McLuhan to be convincing in his arguments, I also found the style of The Medium is the Massage to be a bit confusing to follow compared to Birkerts’ The Gutenberg Elegies where his opinion was primarily clearly stated. When reading The Medium is the Massage, the utilization of other texts, interviews, and images made it a bit difficult to identify when McLuhan was inserting his own opinion and he did not really follow up from the intertexts with how they correlated with his own opinion, making it difficult to determine if he agreed with all parts of what was being said. This confusion also could have risen perhaps from the electronic form I read this novel in, which somewhat gave the novel a cluttered and disorganized feeling. In terms of “what’s next” with this interpretation, I would consider comparing the electronic version to the printed version to identify if the electronic version format might be responsible for this confusion while reading, possibly relating this difference to support Birkerts’ views against technology. After reading the novel, I was also left with a few questions for McLuhan: Would his viewpoint continue to remain the same if he observed today’s society with their over-dependence on smartphones and computers? What is his view on using books to take a break from scrolling through the internet? Does he completely reject the opinions of Birkerts that technology is negative?
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