Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan developed unique philosophies on media and how humans interact with it, popularizing the phrases “The medium is the message” and “Global Village.” Along with Teilhard de Chardin (Noosphere), he is thought to have predicted the Internet in his book, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of the Typographic Man (1962). The “global village” would be an age characterized by people forming communities through technology. McLuhan posited that the method of communication would become more influential than the information itself, ergo “the medium is the message”. 

McLuhan helps us to better see ourselves with in a media-saturated global society/reality. Technology has become extensions of consciousness and even our nervous systems.

[A]ll media, from the phonetic alphabet to the computer, are extensions of man that cause deep and lasting changes in him and transform his environment. Such an extension is an intensification, an amplification of an organ, sense or function, and whenever it takes place, the central nervous system appears to institute a self-protective numbing of the affected area, insulating and anesthetizing it from conscious awareness of what's happening to it. It's a process rather like that which occurs to the body under shock or stress conditions, or to the mind in line with the Freudian concept of repression. I call this peculiar form of self-hypnosis Narcissus narcosis, a syndrome whereby man remains as unaware of the psychic and social effects of his new technology as a fish of the water it swims in. As a result, precisely at the point where a new media-induced environment becomes all pervasive and transmogrifies our sensory balance, it also becomes invisible. [“The PlayboyInterview: Marshall McLuhan”, PlayboyMagazine, March 1969.]

How do we continue to make sense of our human evolution with an exponentially expanding ocean of information and perpetual connectivity? In the words of McLuhan during his interview with Playboy, "I merely try to understand."