Marshall McCluhan: " The Medium is the Message"

In the first chapter of the book "Understanding Media: The Extension of Man" Marshall McCluhan refers mainly to the concept of the medium. From his point of view, everything that makes us advance and impacts our life is considered a medium. Besides the main sources of media like radio, TV, newspapers... things like airplanes or electric light are considered a medium too because they control the form of human association and actions, they are intermediaries. In other words, McCluhan thinks that all technologies have a message that is determined by the impact they have in our society. We are moved by those innovations and we advance socially and politically to new levels because of them.

After reading the first chapter of McClahun's book the idea that came to my mind is that a medium doesn't need to have a content in order to be labeled as such, but it has to cause an impact or have an effect within the society. This impact is considered the message that the medium is sending to the world.

This statement is present in every paragraph of the book when the author tries to warn us about how most people do not see many media as such because of their lack of "content"; but, as he uses as an example, the light does actually bring a message because it communicates something to people around it, such as the TV does. The impact that an airplane has in humans in terms of time and space makes it too a communication medium, as the newspaper can be. In other words, the message doesn't rely on the content, instead it relays on the effect it has.