Relevance of Mchulan's The Medium is the Message Today

Relevance of McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message Today
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Relevance of McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message Today
In the text, The Medium is the Message, McLuhan (1967) predicts the destructive nature of technology on human society. Quoting Whitehead, he argues that the significant advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck societies in which they occur. McLuhan points out that the medium is the message. In essence, societies are shaped more by the nature of the medium of communication than the content of the communication (McLuhan, 1967). As a result, it is the medium, and not the message, that continues to reshape and restructure social patterns of interdependence and every aspect of human life. Therefore, McLuhan predicts the impact of technological advancement as a medium of communication and its subsequent impact on human life.
A key question about the text is the pessimistic view taken by the author. There are several examples given in which communication technology has wrecked or continues to wreck a life. However, a key question is whether the author perceived the importance of modern media on modern society and whether the advantages of technological development outweigh the perceived shortcomings. The authors' arguments tend to focus on the negative impact of technological development and have little to do with the variety of benefits humans derive from the medium. These arguments are compelling because they are still relevant in the current society. For instance, McLuhan argues that electrical information devices for universal, tyrannic...