What is a medium?

To understand why “the medium is the message”, you have to first consider what media are.

Marshall McLuhan stated one definition of ‘medium’ in the title of his 1964 best-selling book ‘Understanding Media: The Extensions Of Man’. All media, all human technologies, innovations, are extensions, amplifications, or enhancements of some sense (mechanism by which we perceive) or faculty (mental or physical power).

No medium operates in isolation, but requires a support network. This brings us to the second definition of ‘medium’: environment. Milieu. Habitat. Ecosystem. Culture. Infrastructure. A multitude of moving parts which make the necessary conditions for something to operate in. A medium is an environment of services and disservices.

Once a technology becomes environmental, it becomes integral, invisible, and indispensable. It is at this point that the medium is the message, because it is the totality of the situation which affects and shapes humanity psychically and socially. Media are transformative, they change us.

“The medium is the message because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action. The content or uses of such media are as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association. Indeed, it is only too typical that the “content” of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium.” (UM:EOM p.9)

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Andrew McLuhan is a writer and consultant (among other things), currently preparing a series of workshops to bring Marshall McLuhan’s ideas forward.