1

The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan

In a cu ltu re like ou rs, long acc ustomed to spl itting and dividing all thi ngs as a means ofcontrol, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded tha t, in opera tional andpractical fact, the med ium is the message. This is me rely ro say that the personal andsoc ial consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - resultfrom the new scale that is introduced Into our affairs by each extension of ourselves,or by any new technology. Thus, with automation, for example, the new patterns ofhuman association rend to eliminate jobs, it is rrue. That is the neganve resulr.Positively, auromarion creates roles for people, which is to say depth of involvernenrin th eir work and human association that ou r preceding mechanical techno logy haddestroyed . Man y people wou ld be disposed to say that it was no t the machine, butw ha t one did with the machine , tha t was its mea ning or message. In te rms o f the waysin wh ich the mach ine al tered our re lations to one another and to ourselves. it matt erednot in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs. The restructuring ofhuman work and association was shaped by the technique of fragmentat ion that is theessence of machine technology. The essence of automation technology is the opposite.It is integral and decentralist in depth, just as the machme was fragmentary, centralist,and superficial in Its patterning of human relationships.

The instance of the electric light may prove illuminating in this connection. Theelectric light is pure informa t ion. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unlessit is used to spe ll out some verba l ad or name. Th is fact, cha racteristic of a ll media,mean s that the "content" of any medi um is a lways another medium. The ccnrenr ofwriting is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and pr int is thecontent of the telegraph. If it IS asked, "What is the content of speech?," it isnecessa ry to say, "It is an actual process of thought, which is in itself nonverbal."An abstract painting rep resents direct manifestation of crea tive thought proces~sasthey might appear in computer designs. What we are considcnng here, however, arethe psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify oraccelerate existing processes. For the "message" of any medium or technology is thecha nge of scale or pace or pa ttern that it introduces into human affairs. The railwaydid nOI introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human soc iety,but it accele rated and enlarged the scale of previous hu man func tions, creatingto tall y new kinds of cities and new kinds o f wo rk and leisure. T his happened

whether the rindependentother ha nd, tform of city,used for.

Let us ren aor night baseare 10 some wthe electric Iimessage" beebuman associthey are mefftypica l thai rbis only tod aywhich they aJmaking effieof processingElectric Cormbulbs and ligbis in the busin

The electricno "content."media at all. Ithat it is noricreally anothermessage of ehFor electric ti~

space fac to rslV, creati ng ir

A fa irly canfrom selectionreferring to T'

In Othello, wltransformed bthe transformi

In Shakespearepsychic and sctrue soc ial an cinnovation:

But son! what light through yonder window breaks?It speaks, and yer 53)'S nothmg.

In Othello, which, as much as King Lear, is concerned with the torment of peopletransformed by illusions, the re are these lines that bespeak Shakespeare's intu ition ofthe transforming powers of new media :

19THEMEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

ls there not charmsBy which the property of you th an d maidhoodMay be abus'd j Have you not read Roderigo,Of some such thing?

In Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, whic h is almost completely devoted to both apsychic and soc ial study of communication, Shakespea re states his awa reness tha ttrue social and political navigation depend upon anticipating the consequences ofmnovarion:

whether the railway functioned in a trop ical or a northern environment, and is quitemdependenr of the freight or content of the railway medium. The ai rplane, on theother hand, by accele rating the rate of transportation, tends to disso lve the railwayform of city, politics, and association. quite independently of what the ai rplane isused for;

Let us return to the electric light. Whether the light is being used for brain surgeryor night baseball is a rnarrer of indifference. It could he: argued that these activitiesare in some way the "content" of the electric light, since they cou ld not exist withoutthe electric light. This fact merely underlines the point that "the medium is themessage" because It IS the medi um that shapes and controls the scale and form ofbuman assoc iation and action. The con tent or uses of such media are as diverse asthey are ineffectual in shap ing the form of human assoc iation. Indeed, it is only tootypical th at the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium. Itis on ly tod ay tha t industries have become aware of the various kinds of business inwh ich th ey arc engaged. When IBM discovered tha t it was not in the business ofmak ing office equipment or business machi nes, but that it was in the businessof processing information, the n it began to navigate with clear vision. The GeneralElectric Company makes a considerable portion of its profits fro m electric lightbulbs and lighting systems. It has not yet discovered that, quite as much as AT&T, itIS in the business of moving information.

The electric light escapes attention as a communication medium JUSt because it hasno "conrem." And this makes it an invalua ble instance of how people fail to studymedia at aU. For It is not till the electnc light is used to spell ou t some brand namethat it is noticed as a medi um. Then It IS not the ligh t but the "co ntent" (or wha t isreally another medium) tha t is noticed. The message of the electric light is like themessage o f elect ric power in industr y, tota lly radical, pervasive, and decent ralized.For electr ic light and power are separate from th eir uses, yet they eliminate time andspace factors in huma n assoc iat ion exac tly as do radi o, telegra ph, telephone, andTV, creating involvement in depth.

A fairly com plete handbook for studying the extensions of man could be made upfrom selections from Shakespeare. Some might quibble about whethe r or nor he wasreferri ng to TV in these familiar lines from Romeo and jllliet:

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MARSHAll MClUHAN

The' providence rhar's in a wa tchfu l stateKnows almost every grain of Plums ' gold,Finds bonom in the uncomprehensive deeps,Keeps piau with thought, and almost like the godsDoes thoughts unvei l in their dumb cradles.

20

AsSelye deals with the total enviro nmental situation in his "s tress" theory of disease,SO the latest appro ach to medi a study considers nor only the "co menr" but themed ium and the cultura l matrix wuhin which the particular medium operates.The olde r unawareness of the psychic and social effects of media can be illustratedfrom almo st any o f the conventiona l pronouncements.

In accepting an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame a few yearsago, Genera l David Sarnoff made this sta tement: "We are tOO pro ne to make tech no­logical inst ruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. T he productsof modern science are nor in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used thatdetermines their value." That is the voice of the current somnambulism. Suppose wewere to say, "Apple pie is in itself neither good no r bad; it is the way it is used thatdetermines its value." Or, "The smallpox virus is in itself nei ther good nor bad; it is theway it is used that determines its value. " Again, "Firea rms arc in themse lves neithe rgood nor bad; it is the way they arc used that determ ines thei r value." That is, if theslugs reach the right people firearm s are good . If the TV tube fires the right ammuni ­no n at the right people it is good. I am nor being perve rse. There is sim ply no thing inthe Sarnoff sta tement that will bea r scrut iny, for it ignores the natu re of the mediu m,of any and all media, in the true Narcissus Style of one hypnotized by the amp utationand extension of his own being in a new tech nical form. Genera l Sarnoff went on toexplain his arritude to the technology of print, saying that it wa s true that print causedmuch tra sh £0 circulate, but it had also dissemin ated the Bible and the thoughts ofseers and philosophers. It has never occurred to General Sarnoff that any tech no logycould do anything but add itself on to what we already are.

Such econ omists as Robert Theobald, W. W. Rostow, and John Kenneth Galbraithhave been ex plam mg for years how It IS that "class ical eco nomics" cannot explain

When he saw me thus launched on yet another enraptured description of what I had observedin animals treated with this or that impure, toxic material, he looked at me with desperatelysad eres and said in obvious despair: "But Selye, try 10 realize what you arc doing before it istOO late! You have now decided to spend your entire life studying the pharmacology of din! "(Hans Scire, The Stress of LIfe )

In mod ern though t, (if n OI in fact )Nothing is that doesn't act,So that is reckoned wisdom whichDescri bes the scratch but not the itch.

The increas ing awareness of the action of media, quit e independent ly of their"conten t" or progr amming, was indicated in the annoyed and an on ymous sta nza:

Th e same kind of total, configu rational awareness that reveals wh y the medium issocia lly the message has occurred in the mo st recent and radical medical theories. Inhis Stress of Ufe, Han s Selye tells of the dismay of a research colleague on hearing ofSelye's theory:

One would have to have an unusual degree of philosophical folly to believe onese lf able toJudge England III six months. A rea r always seemed (a me too short a lime in which toappreciate the United Srares properly, and It is much easier to acquire clear and precise nononsabout the American Union than about Great Britain. In America all laws derive in a sensefrom the same line of thought, The whole of society, so to speak, is founded upon a single fnct ;everything springs from a simple principle. One could compare America to a forest pierced hya multitude of srrarghr road s all converging on the same point. One has on l)' to find the centerand e\'er}'rhing is revealed at a glance. But in England the paths run criss-cross. and ir is onlyby rravelling down each one of them tlut one can build up a picture of (he whole.

educational theory has taken up the matter, Instead o f work ing with specialized"problems" in ar ithmetic, rhe srrucrura lapproach now follows the linea of force in thefield of number and has small child ren meditating about number theory and "sets."

Ca rdinal Newman said of Napoleon. " He understood the grammar of gunpow­der." Napoleon had paid some attentio n to orher media as well , especially thesemaphore telegraph that gave him a great advantage over his enemies. He is onrecord for saying that "Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared th an ath ousand bayonets."

Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to master the grammer of print and typograph y.He was thus able ro read off the message of commg change In France and Amer ica asif he were reading aloud from a text tha t had been handed to him. In fact , thenineteenth century in France and in America was JUSt such an open boo k to deTocquevillc because he had learned the gram mar of print. So he, also, knew whenth at grammar did not apply. lie was asked why he did not wnte a book on England ,since he knew and admired England. He replied :

MARSHAll MCLUHAN22

De Tocqueville, In earlier work on the French Revolution, had explained how it wasthe printed word tha t, achieving cultural saturation in the eighteent h cent ury, hadhomogenized the French nation. Frenchmen were the same kind of peop le fromnorth to sourh. The typograp hic principles of uniformity, continuity, and linealitvhad overlaid the complexit ies of ancient feudal and oral society. The Revolution wascarried out by the new Iirerati and lawyers.

In England , however, such was the power of the ancient oral traditions ofco mmon law, backed b)' the medievelinsrirunon of Parliament , rhar no uruforrmryor cont inuity o f the new visual prim culture could take complete hold . The resultwas that the most important event in English history has never taken place; name ly,the English Revolution on the lines of rhe French Revol ution. The AmericanRevolution had no medieval lega l institutions to disca rd or to root out, apart frommonarchy. And many have held (hat the American Presidency has become very muchmore personal and monarchical than any European monarch ever could be.

De Tocqueville's contrast between England and America is clearly based on thefact of typography and of print culture creating uruformiry and continuity. England,he says, has rejected this principle and clung ro the dynermc or oral comm on-lawrradirion. Hence the discontinuity and unpredictable quahry o f English cultu re. Thegram mar of Print cannot help to construe the message of oral and nonwritten cultureand Insrirurio ns. The English aristoc racy was properly classified as barbaria n byMatthew Arno ld because its power and sta tus had noth ing to do with literacy orwith the cultural forms of typog raph y. Said the Duke of Gloucester to EdwardGibbon upon the publicati on of his Decline and Fall: "Anot her damned fat book ,

23THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

~'1r. Gibbon? Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?" De Tocqueville was aIy literate aris toc rat who was quite able to be detached from the va lues andrn pnons of typography. That is why he alone understood the grammar of

~raphy. And if is only on those terms, standing aside from any structure or~ium, that its pr inciples and lines of force can be discerned. For any medium has

power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary. Prediction and controlrsr in avoiding this subliminal state of Narcissus trance. But the greatest aid to

end is simply in knowing that the spell ca n occur immediately upon contact, asthe first bars of a melody.A Passage to India by E. M . Forster is a dramatic study of the inabil ity of oral and

-.mltive oriental culture to meet with the rat ional, visual European patterns ofesperience. "Rational," of course, has for the \'('est long rneanr "uniform and

tinuous and sequential." In ocher words, we have confused reason with literacy,aid rationalism with a single technology. Thus in the elect ric age man seems to the

ve nrional West to become irrational. In Forster 's novel the moment of truth andocation from the typographic trance of the West comes in the Marabar Caves.la Quested's reasoning powers cannot cope with the total inclusive field ofnance that is India. After the Caves: "Life went on as usual, but had no

ceesequences, that is to say, sounds did not echo nor thought develop. Everyt hingseemed cut off at its root and the refore infected with illusion."

A Passage to India (the phrase is from Whitman, who saw America headedEasrward) is a parable of Western man in the electric age, and is only incidentallyreiared to Europe or the Orient. The ultimate conflict between sight and sound,between written and oral kinds of perception and organization of existence is upon

Since understanding stops act ion, as Nietzsche obse rved, we can moderate therceness of this conflict by understanding the media that extend us and ra ise these

wars with in and wit hout us.Derribalizanon by literacy and its traumatic effects on tribal man is the themea book by the psychiatrist J. C. Carothers, The African Mind in Health and

DISease (World Health Organization, Geneva, 1953). Much of his materialappeared III an article in Psychiatry magazine, November, J959: "The Culture,Piychiatry, and the Written Word." Again, it is elect ric speed that has revealed thehoes of force operating from \Vestern technology in the remotest areas of bush,savannah, and desert. One example is the Bedou in with his battery rad io on board~ camel. Submerging natives with floods of concepts for which nothing hasprepared them is the normal act ion of all of our technology. Bur with electriceedia Western man himself experiences exactly the same inundation as the remoteearivc. We are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieuthan the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of hiscollective tribal world and beaches him in indiv idual isolation. We are as numbin our new electric world as the native invo lved in our literate and mechanicalculture.

Electric speed mingles the cultures of prehistory with the dregs of ind ustr ialmarkeree rs, the non literate with the semiliterate and the postlitera re. Mental break ­dow n of varymg degrees is the very common result of uprooting and inundationwith new information and endless new patterns of informat ion. Wynd ham Lewismade this a theme of his group of novels called The Human Age. The first of these,The Chi/dermass, is concerned prec isely wi th accelera ted media change as a kind ofmassacre of the innocents . ln our own world as we become more aware of the effects

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of technology on psychic formation and manifestation , we arc losing all confi dencein our right to assign guilt. Ancient prehisto ric socie ties regard violent crime aspathetic. T he killer is regarded as we do a ca ncer victim. "How terri hie it must be tofeelli ke that," they say. J. M. Synge rook up this idea very effecti vely in his Playboyof the Western World.

If the criminal appears as a nonconformist who is unable to meet the dem and oftechnology that we behave in uniform and continuous patterns, literate man is quiteinclined to see others who cannot conform as somewhat pa thetic. Especially thech ild, the cripple, the woman, and the colored person appe ar in a world of visual andtypographic technology as victims of injustice. On the other hand , in a culture rha rassigns roles instead of jobs to people - the dwarf, the skew, the ch ild create thei rown spaces. They are not expected ro fit into some uniform and repeatable nichethat is not thei r size anyway. Consider the phrase "It's a man's world." As aquantitative observation endlessly repeated from within a homogenized culture,this phr ase refers to the men in such a culture who have to be homogenized Dag­woods in order to belong at all . It is in our IQ testing that we have produced thegreatest flood of misbegotte n standards. Unaware of our typogra phic cultural bias,our testers assume that uniform and continuous habits are a sign of inte lligence, th uselimina ting the ear man and the tactile man.

C. P.Snow, reviewing a book of A. L. Rowse (The New York Times Book Review,December 24, 1961) on Appeasement and the road to Mun ich, desc ribes the toplevel of British brains and experience in the 1930s. "Their IQ 's were much higherthan usual among pol itical bosses. Why were they such a disaster ?" The view ofRowse, Snow approves: "They would not listen to warnings because they did notwish to hear." Being anti -Red made it impossible for them to read the message ofHitler. But their failure was as nothing compared to our present one. T he Americanstake in literacy as a technology or uniformity applied to every level of ed ucation,government, industry, and social life is totally threatened by the elect ric technology.The threat of Stalin or H itler was external. The electric technology is within thegates, and we are numb, deaf, blind, and mute about its encounte r with the Gu ten­berg technology, on and through whic h the American way of life was formed. It is,however, no time to suggest strategies when the threat has not even been acknow­ledged to exist. I am in the position of Louis Pasteur telling doctors that their greatestene my was quite invisible, and qui te unr ecognized by them. Our co nventionalresponse to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the num bstance of the technol ogical idiot. For the "content" of a med ium is like the juicy pieceof meat carried by the bu rglar to dist ract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of themedium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medi um as"content." The content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera. The effect ofthe movie form is not related to its program content. T he "content" of writing orprint is speech, bur the rea der is almos t entirely unaware either of pr int or ofspeech.

Arnold Toyn bee is innocent of any understand ing of media as they have sha pedhistory, but he is full of examples that the student of med ia can usc . At one momenthe can seriously suggest that adult education, such as the Workers EducationalAssoc iation in Brita in, is a useful cou nte rforce to the popula r press. Toynbee con­siders that although all of the oriental societies have in our time accepted theindustrial technology and its pol itical consequences: "On the cultura l plane, how­ever, there is no uniform correspon ding tendency." This is like the voice of the

24 MARSHALL MClUHAN

25THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

rate man , floun der ing in a milieu o f ads, who boas ts, "Personally, I pay nomennon to ads." T he spi ritual and cultural reservat ions that the orienta l peoples

y have toward our technology will ava il the m not at a11. The effec ts of technologynot occu r at the level of opi nions or concepts, bur alter sense ra tios or patterns ofeprion steadily and without an) resistance. The serious artist is the only personto encounter technology with impuniry, just because he is an expert aware of the

nges in sense perce pnon.The ope ration of the money med ium in seven teent h-century Japan had effects norlike the operation of typography in the \Vest. The penetration of the moneymomy, wrote G. B. Sansom (in japan, Cressee Press, London, 193 1), "caused a

ow but irresistible revo lution, culminati ng in the break down of feudal gove rnment&ltd the resumption of intercourse wit h foreign countries after more than two

undred yea rs of seclusion." Money has reorgan ized the sense life of peop les JUStause it is an ex tension of our sense lives. Thi s change does not depend upo n

app rova l or disapproval of those living in the society.Arno ld Toynbee mad e one approac h to the rra nsfonru ng power o f media in his

.epr of -erhenabzarion." whic h he holds to be the principle of progress iveamplification and efficiency in any organization or technology. Typically, he is

nng the effect of the challenge of these forms upon the response of o ur senses.He Imagines that II is the respo nse of our opinions that is relevant to the effect ofmrdia and technology m society, a -porm of view" that is plainly the result of therypogra ph ic spell. For the man in a literate and homogenized society ceases to beKTbitive to the diverse and disconnn uous life of forms. He acq uires the illusion ofdIt th ird dimension and the "priva te pom r of view" as part o f his Narcissus fixat ion,and IS quite shut o ff from Blake's awareness or that of the Psalm ist, that we becomewha t we behold.

Today when we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and ha ve need to

stand aside from the bias and pr essure exerted by an y techn ical form of humanexpression, we have only to visit a society where that par t icular form has not beentelt, o r a historical period in wh ich it was unknown. Professor Wilbur Schram mmade such a tact ical move in studyi ng Television in the Lures of Our Children. Helund areas where TV had nor penetrated at all an d ran some tests. Since he had

nude no study of the pec uliar natu re of the TV image, his tests were of "content"preferences, \'lewlOg time, and vocabulary counts. In a word, his approach to theproble m was a literary one, albeit unconsciously so. Consequently, he had not hing torepo rt. Had his methods been employed m 1500 AD to discover the effects of thepn med book in the lives of children or adults, he could have found out nothing ofthe changes in human an d soc ial psychology resulting fro m typography. Printcreated individu alism and na tiona lism m the sixteenth century. Program and "con­tent" analysis offer no clues to the magic of these media o r to their subliminalcharge.

Leonard Doob , in his reporr Cc nnnunication in Africa, tells of one African whotoo k great pai ns to listen each evening to the BBC news, even though he couldundersta nd noth ing of it. Just to be in the presence o f those sounds at 7 p.m. eachday was important for him. His atti tude to speec h was like ours to melod y - theresonant intonation was meaning enough. In the sevenreem h century ou r ancestorssnll sha red th is native's atti tude co the forms of med ia, as is plain in (he followi ngsentiment of the Frenchman Bernard Lam exp ressed III The Art of SpeakmgLondon, 1696);

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II is not an exaggeration to ~)' th.lI the furure of modem society and the'slabi1it} of its innerlife depend in large part on the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of thetechniques of communication and the capacity of the individual's own reacnon.

Every Roman was surrounded by slaves. The slave and his psychology flooded ancient hair,and every Roman became Inwardly, and of course unwmmgly, a slave. Because hving con­stam ly in the atmosphere of slaves, he became infected through the unconsc ious with theirpsychology, No one can shield hImself from such an influence (Contributions to AnalytIcalPsych%g")', London, 1928).

MARSHAll MCLUHAN

H ere is an eq uilib rium theor y of huma n die t and expression such as eve n now we arconly st riving to work out again for media after cenrunes of fragmentation andspecialism.

Pope Pius XII was deeply concerned that then: be serious study of t he media today.On Februa ry 17, 1950, he said:

"Tis an effect of the Wisdom of God. who created Man to be happy, that whatever 1$ useful tohis conversanon (way of life) is agreeable (0 him ... because all victual that conduces tonounshmem IS relishable, whereas other rhmgs that cannot be assrmulared and be rurn edmto our substance an: insipid. A Discourse cannot be pleasant to the He-arer that is not easieto the Speaker, nor can it be eas ily pronounced unless it be heard with delight.

26

Failure in th is respect ha s for centuries been typical and total for manki nd.Su blimina l and doci le accepta nce of medi a im pac t ha s made them prisons withoutwalls for their hum an users. As A. J. Lieb ling rem arked in his hook The Press, a ma nis nor free If he ca nner see w here he is going, even if he h.as a gun to help him getthere. For each of the media is a lso a powerfu l weapon with which to clobber ot he rmedia and other groups. The resu lt is that the present age has been one of multiplecivil wars that a re not limned to the world of art and entertainment. In \Var andHuman Progress, Pro fesso r J. U. Nef declared: "The total wars of our time have bee nthe result of a series of intellectua l mistakes ..."

If the forma tive power in the media are the med ia the mselves, rhar raises a host o flarge matter s that ca n only be mentioned here, althou gh they deserve vo lumes.Na mely, tha t technologi cal media ar e staples or narural resources, exactly as ar ccoa l and co tton and oil. Anybody will co ncede th at soc iety wh ose eco nomy isdependent upon one or two major staples like co tton, or grain, or lum ber, o r fish,or carrie is going to have some obvious social patterns of organization as a resu lt .Stress on a few major staples c reates extreme instabi lity in the eco nomy bur greatendurance III the population. The pathos and humor of the Ame rican South areembedded in such an economy of limited staples. For a society configured byreliance on a few com modities accepts them as a socia l bon d quite as much as themetropolis does the press. Corro n and oil, like radio and TV, become "fixed charges"on the entire psychic life o f the co mmun ity. And this pervas ive fact crea tes theunique cu ltural flavor of any society . It pays thro ugh the nose and a ll irs other sensesfo r each sta ple that shapes its life.

Th at our human senses, of whi ch all media a re ext ension s, ar e a lso fixed chargeson our pe rso na l energies, .and that they a lso con figure the aware ness and experienceof each one of us, may be perceive d in another connection mentioned by thepsyc ho logist C. G. jung: