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".

List of Dark Angel episodes

Dark Angel is an American biopunk/cyberpunk science fiction television series created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee. It premiered in the United States and Canada on the Fox network on October 3, 2000, but was canceled after two seasons. The show chronicles the life of Max Guevara (X5-452), a genetically enhanced super-soldier, portrayed by Jessica Alba as an adult, and Geneva Locke as a child.

Series overview

Episode list

Season 1 (2000–01)

Season 2 (2001–02)

References

External links