This is a review of “Understanding Media: The Extension of Man” part one by Marshall McLuhan which was published in 1964. He was a Canadian philosopher who is known for his media theory. He has coined the expression on “The Medium is the Message”
It means that the nature of medium is more important than the meaning or content of message.
The book Understanding Media: The Extension of Man by Marshall McLuhan is divided into two parts. “The Medium is the Message” is the first chapter of the part one where he explains about positive and negative effect of media and technology on human being and their relationship in societies. McLuhan explain that human mind and behavior is affected by medium rather than content. For an example it is easy to understand advertisement on television by seeing rather than reading newspaper. In this book McLuhan has given an example of light bulb where light bulb is a medium and night baseball or brain surgery is a content. There is more importance of medium in human mind rather than content. Likewise, no any night activities can be done without light bulb. McLuhan proposes that a medium itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of the study. He said that medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.
The second chapter of part one is about “Media Hot and Cold” where McLuhan represent hot media as low participation with high information flow and cold media considered as high participation with low information. Hot media requires less involvement because it is fill with more information and easy to understand for example radio, film etc. provides hearing and visual effects which is easy to catch by all users so less involvement of understanding requires whereas for cold media high attention by sensory organs required because it involves less information. Users have to provide more attention to get necessary information from cold media. We can take example of movies which represents hot media. They enhance one single sense, in this case i.e. vision so that a person does not need to make more effort in filling the details of a movie image. On the other hand, TV or comic book can be an example of cold media where a person has minimal presentation of visual detail requires a high degree of effort to fill in details to understand its information.
In chapter three “Reversal of the Overheated Medium” the author talks about the change of agricultural economy to industrial economy to electronic information economy. McLuhan focus on the importance of technology in such economical change. Previously people do work on the country side and prefer city for relaxation but due the development of electronic media and technology it has been vice versa. The writer forecast the growth in science and technology which change the living scenario of people of both city and urban areas. The availability of easily accessible infrastructures and technology in villages attract people of crowded urban areas for easy living. If facilities are equally provided to both villages and cities then people will prefer to live and work from village that is possible due to modification in technology.
In the fourth chapter “The gadgets lover” the author focused on Narcissus as Narcosis where Narcosis represents dullness which is created through media, gadget and use of technology. The writer took example of Narcissus who is a Greek character. He has compared the effect of technology in human mind with Narcissus who deeply fall in love with his own reflection in water and do not realize that it is his own reflection likewise the technological change has created numbness in human mind where people cannot think creatively due to continuous use of technology and being dependent on it. We can take simple example of calculator which is a technological innovation and had make our life easier for calculation but on the other hand it has created numbness in human mind by using it. Human beings are even not confident in simple calculation by using their mind. Simple technology like calculator made our mind so dull then it is a great challenge for humanity to innovate and use modern gadget and technology. Hence, people are so attracted towards latest gadget and technology which is making them deprived from real world.
In the sixth chapter “Media as Translators” McLuhan has a view that technologies are the ways and medium to share human experience and used to translate one kind of knowledge to another mode and all forms of media are metaphors because they transfer and transmit human experience.
In conclusion, the author has highlighted both positive and negative effects of technology. It has made humanity easier and advance but on the other side it has made human mind dull. The writer has view of importance of technology in each chapter. First chapter highlighted the importance of medium and its uses to understand message. Second chapter distinguish the difference between hot and cold media and involvement of human mind to understand message from information. Third chapter introduces the focus of living on villages rather than cities if there will be equality in availability of technology in both areas. The fourth chapter shows the dullness created by science and technology due to use of gadget. Lastly sixth chapter explains that the media and technology is extension of human mind.
Works Cited
Gozzi, Raymond Jr. 'Hot and Cool' Media
https://www.jstor.org/stable/42582353?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. n.d. 6. 4. 2019.
McLuhan, Marshall. "Understanding Media:The Extension Of Man." London and New York, 1964. pp 1-68.
Vemola, Jakub. Reflections of Marshall McLuhan’s Media Theory in the Cinematic https://is.muni.cz/th/109783/ff_m/Vemola_MA_diploma_thesis.pdf. 2009. 6. 4. 2019.