Marshall McLuhan - Medium is the message

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher of communication theory and professor for the University of Toronto. McLuhan studied media in order to understand what it is that makes us live the way we do as a way of understanding society. He described some medias as hot and cool suggesting that people who worked on radio were more literate to those who work on T.V as the medium controls the way in which people communicate and decides what it of most importance when delivering the message. Further, McLuhan also suggested that changes society in the way we communicate the message, through participation we become unified proposing the concept of a global village...essentially that little thing we call the internet. McLuhan was certainly ahead of his time and it is hard not to agree with the suggestions he makes as they have come to realisation.The global village he talks about has become our leading medium for communication, now living within a global community we are instantly informed and updated with everything that is happening right now. I agree with his elevations of literacy and would like to take it to the next stage and say that the global village breeds highly levels of illiteracy than he could possibly invisage. The emergence of social media’s, smart phones and skype have taken over all else and become our main medium for communication and thus people have become lazy, even to the point where language is de-evolving into abbreviations and and half words that end with a ‘z’. McLuhan talks of advertising as ‘folk art’ and that in 50 years time the advertising of his day will be irrelevant to that time. This is true. Due to the ‘click bait’ culture that has risen in recent times adverts are no longer pieces of choreographed messages attempting to warm into a product, we are now faced with abrasive pop ups that scream at you purchase insurance and put your mortgage on Wayne Rooney to bag his next goal through the legs of an unfortunate soul. The one element McLuhan got wrong in my view was when discussing how to move away from violence he spoke of dialog and from my understanding his predictions of a global village did not include violent communication. The global community of the internet can be a dark place. I feel that the internet as a medium is used to promote various forms of harmful activity, whether it be anything from bullying to peadophillia, trafficking to hate propoganda. We are exposed to this kind of activity everyday that we are logged in whether it be directly or indirectly through media informing you that is happening. As architects we are always taught from day one, choose your medium of communication carefully.