The medium is the message

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

Publications

The phrase was introduced in McLuhan's most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. McLuhan proposes that a medium itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.

McLuhan frequently punned on the word "message", changing it to "mass age", "mess age", and "massage"; a later book, The Medium Is the Massage was originally to be titled The Medium is the Message, but McLuhan preferred the new title, which is said to have been a printing error.

Key concepts

For McLuhan, it was the medium itself that shaped and controlled "the scale and form of human association and action". Taking the movie as an example, he argued that the way this medium played with conceptions of speed and time transformed "the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configuration and structure." Therefore, the message of the movie medium is this transition from "lineal connections" to "configurations".

The Medium

The Medium is a short (one-hour-long) two-act dramatic opera with words and music by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by Columbia University, its first performance was there on 8 May 1946. The opera's first professional production was presented on a double bill with Menotti's The Telephone at the Heckscher Theater, New York City, February 18–20, 1947 by the Ballet Society. The Broadway production took place on May 1, 1947, at the Ethel Barrymore Theater with the same cast.

In 1951, Menotti directed, with the help of filmmaker Alexander Hammid, a film version made to resemble film noir, and starring Anna Maria Alberghetti. A live television production starring Marie Powers took place on 12 December 1948 on the TV series Studio One. A version was produced for Australian television in 1960.

Roles

Synopsis

Act 1

The medium's parlor

The Message

The Message may refer to:

Literature

Music

Demetri Martin

Demetri Evan Martin (born May 25, 1973) is an American comedian, actor, artist, musician, writer, and humorist. He is best known for his work as a stand-up comedian, being a contributor on The Daily Show, and his Comedy Central show Important Things with Demetri Martin.

Early life

Martin was born on May 25, 1973 to a Greek American family in New York City, New York, the son of nutritionist Lillian and Greek Orthodox priest Dean C. Martin (now deceased). He grew up in Toms River, New Jersey, and has a younger brother named Spyro.

Martin graduated from Yale University in 1995. During his time there, he wrote a 224-word poem about alcoholism as a project for a fractal geometry class, which became a well known palindromic poem. He was also a member of the Anti-Gravity Society, whose members juggle objects on Sunday evenings on Yale's Old Campus.

Although Martin was accepted into Harvard Law School, he went to New York University School of Law after he received a full scholarship. Martin withdrew from law school before the start of his final year, opting to pursue comedy over finishing his Juris Doctor.

Message

A message is a discrete unit of communication intended by the source for consumption by some recipient or group of recipients. A message may be delivered by various means, including courier, telegraphy, carrier pigeon and electronic bus.

A message can be the content of a broadcast. An interactive exchange of messages forms a conversation.

One example of a message is a communiqué (pronounced /kəˈmjuːnᵻkeɪ/), which is a brief report or statement released by a public agency.

Role in human communication

In communication between humans, messages can be verbal or nonverbal:

In computer science

There are two main senses of the word "message" in computing: messages between the human users of computer systems that are delivered by those computer systems, and messages passed between programs or between components of a single program, for their own purposes.