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Reading Report number 2

4. On page 9, McLuhan asserts: "the content of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium". Pick an example from the text that shows what he means by this. Do you agree with this view? Why (or why not)?

If we take the definition that medium in plural is media, clearly the “content of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium”. For instance, in an adviser, we don’t see the importance of the light (the medium) but just the content (the message). There is thus a kind of hierarchy presupposed with Content>Media>medium. Because of the supremacy of the message, we tend to forget the characteristics of the medium, this is why we fail to study media.

This is increased by the fact that the content of any medium is always another medium, there is thus a permanent connection between mediums, as the author said, speech is the content of writing, writing is the content of print and print itself is the content of telegraph. This connection lost us as we are used to classify and divide in order to control. Cubism makes it very clear that the medium is the message, since for the first time, it shows the sensory awareness of the whole, an artwork in its entirety.  

To illustrate his theory, McLuhan uses the example of electric light is pure information, without content, it shows the existence of a pure medium, light. It is a medium without messageunless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. It means that the “content” of any medium is always another medium. Before its existence it was difficult to see that the message wasn’t only the content, it is the medium, we have to view it as a change of scale. Understand this aspect makes us see that the medium shapes controlling the form of human association and thus, human action. A certain kind of medium will raise your sensibility more or less. For example, the cinema underlines certain aspects like the oral and visual, at the contrary of the four-dimension (4D) cinema that uses the touch feeling but let less space to the imagination. Those differences shape the human interaction that results. This is why it is too easy to affirm that the content of the medium is linked to the characteristic of the medium.

We thus proved the importance that the message is the content is a medium, and that this is primordial in order to study media. But we have not studied the importance of the word “blind”. As we’ve said in the introduction, the importance of this second medium (second in the cognitive process) hides the primordial existence of the first medium. Slowly we are realizing that the nature of the medium isn’t a benign information. Internet is a medium and is completely biased, so is the newspaper (leftish or not). The problem of that blindness is that we forgot that a medium uniform the population, the example of the French newspapers that uniformed the French population to the importance of the Republic is perfect. Mediums (media) uniforms the cultural matrix in which it operates (unless the oriental one), and the unawareness of the internal psychic and social effects of media is worrying. The example of Sarnoff shows that the enemy is external and invisible, as it is difficult to understand the true nature of the medium, often we are blinded by its aesthetical appearance, and paradoxically the importance of aesthetics is forgotten (or invisible). Media are a manipulation, as there is an imbrication of mediums in a media. Media have shaped history, unless there is an adult education that would be useful to counterforce to the popular press, it is difficult.

Finally, there is the effect of a change of perception with time. Only the artist, an expert, is capable to see the imbrication of mediums, their individual importance that varies with the changes of perception. For instance, if we want to get rid of the sense of perception of our own culture, we have to go to a society where technology hasn’t shaped their perception. There is a permanent equilibrium between the type of communication and the capacity of the individual’s own reaction influenced by those (permanent like newspapers) media.

Because it is difficult to understand that the medium is the message, it is difficult to understand that the nature of the medium in itself is hidden by the content. We are then more likely to be manipulated; as we are more tend to focus on the obvious, and the cascade effects of medium.

Nonetheless, some medium can have zero content, like the pure light or the light bulb that creates an environment by its mere presence. And sometimes the nature of the medium is more important that other medium, because of the conventional importance that we attach to it for instance the Carré Blanc sur fond blanc. You have a message attached to nature of the medium, art, a painting, and the monetarization of it.

Even if communication and its aesthetic form is primordial, it isn’t always more important than the message. If not, we wouldn’t have different form of medium, but the one that would be the most efficient.