The Medium is the Message
Advice from McLuhan about technology. (#Day99)
In Fall 2006, a fleeting moment would change my life forever. I was making the jump. Myspace was to be left in the rear view mirror, as Facebook was all the rage within digital communities and friend groups. In Middle School, I didn’t see the value in Facebook. Why would anyone want to use it? You could have shared pictures or messaged friends through Myspace with just as many clicks. Facebook didn’t even offer the chance to play a song while viewing a profile!
Enter, Facebook.com. Back in 2005, those who graduated high school in 2009 were some of first high schoolers to join a social network that was previously exclusive to those cool college friends. We would see pictures of them partying at fraternity houses or going to football games, and through this our dreams were even further cemented.
Over the subsequent 10 years, Facebook would continually go on to expand and become an integral part of the election system, our friend groups, memory preservation, and lives. Staying in touch takes on a new meaning when you can casually “Like” other’s photos or send over an occasional Facebook Message even if you hadn’t spoken to this friend in years. Those who graduated high school between 2006–2012 are, in my opinion, the “Facebook Generation”.
Throughout 100DaysOfBlogging, certain stylistic elements and phrases were intentionally used in order to elicit a certain response from the reader. By being so open about personal about the blog’s story, I was able to capture people’s attention. One of my goals was to push Medium.com to its maximum limits, to see how quick edits or viral growth of posts in short time frames could be handled.
I love Medium because Facebook has become boring. It’s not that looking at Facebook is invaluable; it’s just that the conversation on Medium enables deeper ideas and connections to form. In an era of memes, sports highlights, and spectacle, Medium is an escape back towards thought for the sake of pure thought.
Medium is an acropolis for the Internet, because in blog posts the reader is forced to listen, to give the writer a chance to speak.
On Medium you more actively pull content, and through reading are forced to absorb new ideas and make your own deductions about them. Blogs here aren’t warped by the need to generate revenue or views for advertisers, nor are they limited to 140 characters. The community on Medium resembles a mature, patient, and thoughtful bunch — rather than the sarcasm, trolling, and quick to respond cultures found on other websites.
Medium is powerful because of how useful of a tool it is for writers and readers alike. Styling posts to capture attention through adjusting photo displays and placement is effectively and easily done through the website’s seamless and overly simple use interface. Medium gets rid of all of the extra features that are not necessary and smooths out the experience of writing online to reflect that of writing on a piece of paper. The statistics provided in an author’s profile around how many Views and Reads each posts receives, as well as their day-to-day breakdown, is additionally very useful.
Over the next 10 years, if Medium integrates payments and micro-tipping properly, its possible that the site will grow to the level of Facebook. Everyone deserves the opportunity to speak, and Medium provides the best platform yet for providing engaging, community generated content to read than any other site on the web.
To summarize these shifts in communication and interrelation that our societies go through, Marshall McLuhan coined the term “the Medium is the message”. As Wikipedia reads,
“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.”
Medium is, quite simply, the best medium we have for have crucial discussions that will affect the future of our country for generations to come. Medium is a breeding ground for ideas and a social network to cultivate their actualization.
Similarly, the Block-M at the University of Michigan is a Medium for the University to let the world know about its presence. It’s branding is second among any college in the world after the Texas Longhorn, if not arguably first. Even if I didn’t go to UofM, I would consider wearing around the hat because it garners attention. Leonardo DiCaprio does this.
Michigan graduates are a close-knit social and professional network. Every Fall this is re-enforced through the Big House (college football’s biggest stadium) and the football team. It is not a coincidence that Michigan has the most winning college football program, or is located in the Midwest, the true heart of America.
This weird coincidence described above is not good or bad, it’s just the reality of the situation. Michigan’s branding is why some people find jobs and others don’t. My posts about fraternities were a long-winded attempt to ignite discussion around the role of both secretive and non-secretive groups in our lives.
The University of Michigan, for one, is a fraternity.
The University itself is a Medium for other groups to preserve their interests in society. Education shapes our realities and our lives.
Through Medium’s independence to traditional forms of publishing and scalability, the site allows for unboundedly creative and diverse content that is not subject to the editing or approval of a publisher. Medium has few rules. Break them! The brand is your own, the stage is yours.
All throughout, Medium proves the lens.
#Day99 , #100DaysOfBlogging
