Megan Garber

Have you?

Love it.

Love it.

That is a great education.

Yeah.

So Marshall McLuhan, the scholar who is, I think, most famous for the aphorism, the medium is the message.

Which basically means that, you know, the technologies we use to communicate, the mediums we use to communicate, like TV and newspapers and magazines and radio and the like, they're much more than technologies alone.

They're much more than machines.

They're much more than things we use.

They are also things that shape the way we see the world, that shape our information implicitly.

However much we talk about technology as things that serve us and tools we use, when it comes to the communications technologies, they're on some level using us too and, you know, just informing the way that we see the world and thereby shaping the world as they go along.

Yes.

So McLuhan was writing in the 1960s.

So his reference points were television especially, but then also newspapers, magazines, radio, that kind of thing.

I think why he is so relevant right now is that so many of his insights apply to the internet.

You know, I think of something like social media, for example, and the medium there is a flow of information, one kind of news feed that puts everything together.

That is how most consumers get their news on social media, just that one kind of flow made of infinite scroll and information that could be perfected.

personal and about the news of the day and about, you know, your puppy that you just got and, you know, so many different things combining into one feed.

And that is the medium.

But the message is everything is one, right?