“THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE”

From the Wikipedia entry on the life and works of Marshall McLuhan:

“In this book, initiated by Quentin Fiore, McLuhan adopted the term "massage" to denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium, inventorying the "effects" of numerous media in terms of how they "massage" the sensorium.

“Fiore, at the time a prominent graphic designer and communications consultant, set about composing the visual illustration of these theories. Near the beginning of the book, Fiore adopted a pattern in which an image demonstrating a media effect was presented with a textual synopsis on the facing page. The reader experiences a repeated shifting of analytic registers -- from "reading" typographic print to "scanning" photographic facsimiles -- reinforcing McLuhan's overarching argument in this book: namely, that each medium produces a different "massage" or "effect" on the human sensorium.

“In The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan also rehashed the argument -- which first appeared in the Prologue to 1962's The Gutenberg Galaxy -- that media are "extensions" of our human senses, bodies and minds.

“Finally, McLuhan described key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views were changed by the adoption of new media. "The technique of invention was the discovery of the nineteenth [century]", brought on by the adoption of fixed points of view and perspective by typography, while "[t]he technique of the suspended judgment is the discovery of the twentieth century", brought on by the bard abilities of radio, movies and television.”

An audio recording version of McLuhan's famous work was made by Columbia Records in the late 1960s. The recording consists of a pastiche of statements made by McLuhan interrupted by other speakers. You hear people speaking in various phonations and falsettos, discordant sounds and 1960s incidental music in what could be considered a deliberate attempt to translate the disconnected images seen on TV into an audio format, resulting in the prevention of a connected stream of conscious thought. Various audio recording techniques and statements are used to illustrate the relationship between spoken, literary speech and the characteristics of electronic audio media. McLuhan biographer Philip Marchand called the recording "the 1967 equivalent of a McLuhan video."

 

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