Summary of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The medium is the message, and the content of any medium is another medium. The content of speech is an actual process of thought, which is itself nonverbal. The essence of automation technology is the opposite. It is integral and decentralist in depth, just as the machine was fragmentary and centralist in its patterning of human relationships.

#2 The electric light is a perfect example of how people fail to study media. It is not until the light is used to spell out some brand name that it is noticed as a medium. The message of the light is completely radical, pervasive, and decentralized.

#3 The same kind of total, configurational awareness that reveals why the medium is socially the message has occurred in the most recent and radical medical theories. In his book Stress of Life, Hans Selye describes the dismay of a research colleague when he heard about Selye’s theory: he had decided to spend his life studying the pharmacology of dirt.

#4 The older approach to media study ignores not only the content but also the medium and cultural matrix within which the particular medium operates. The latest approach considers not only the content but also the medium and cultural matrix within which the particular medium operates.

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