In chapter one of Marshall Mcluhan’s book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Mcluhan delves into the deeper questions of how culture is shaped by the mediums for messages within society. Citing electricity, he examines how it has revolutionized technology in allowing for instantaneous reception of information. Rather than thinking of electricity solely in terms of what it provides, Mcluhan considers how it functions as a medium for communication in a multitude of ways, therefore rendering past processes obsolete. Comparing this phenomena to the cubism art movement, he writes, that “by giving the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, [cubism] drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole” (5). In the same way that electricity made mechanization obsolete, cubism eliminates sequences for the production of art that were previously considered necessary for the craft.
Mcluhan’s assertions that “the medium is the message” are fundamental to achieving a greater understanding of media literacy in today’s world. The role we play as contributors to media are as equally important as our role as consumers. In the past, the public held a more passive position in the digital world, but this has changed drastically with the introduction of blogging platforms, social media, and crowdsourcing, which have all placed a degree of control over media into the hands of the consumer. Therefore, it must be emphasized that who is using the medium has changed how we view the associated message. Mcluhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man was published in 1964 and so does not address the issues related to media literacy that have arisen as a result of these technological advances. Nevertheless, his theorizing regarding the ways in which medium have shaped culture is spot-on; if we apply his concepts to the rapidly changing digital world of today, it is true that culture has been molded by the mediums at its disposal. This was made clear from the readings our class focused on during our studies of the globalization of digital media, which explored how this has increased the need for greater education in media literacy.