Discuss with McLuhan

            “Medium is the message” is an idea of McLuhan, that to delimit the character of the elements in a communication and the relationships between them.The elements in a communication include the idea of the sender’s mind, the content the sender create, the channel (the medium) between the sender and receiver, etc.

            According to McLuhan’s idea, message receiver can already get something about the message via the medium before they decode the content. Taking the movie as a reference, McLuhan said that movie is meaning a concept, which is a transformation of speed and time. Therefore, the audience can know that the movie is going to bring them the story and a deeper meaning message behind the story by a transforming the speed and time of the content before they get into the cinema and watch the movie.

            However, I am only agreeing with a half of McLuhan’s idea. The message receiver CANNOT get anything about the message through the medium before they decode the content. They can only know how the medium brings them the message in the coming time at most. To explain my idea with a practical example, there is a film call “SPY” I watched in the summer. While my friend date my to watch this film, I have no idea about how will be the story and the message behind look like. Until I saw the poster in the box office of the cinema, I know that it is a comedy of a clumsy lady who works as a police or FBI as I saw her taking gun in the poster. After around two hours, I finish watching the film, I watched the whole story and get the deeper message behind. That is “Never underestimate yourself and to be hopeful when challenge comes.” I can’t know anything about this big message before I watch the film. This is the reason for why I am only agreeing with a half of McLuhan’s idea, while I understand his explanation of movie is transforming the speed and time of the content. In fact, this concept of movie means nothing of every movie of there content and the deeper message.

  
          Besides, McLuhan point out that the medium influences that how the message is perceived. I disagree with it! To have a sample example, no matter the lecturer tell me the details about the home work in which way, such as email, whatsapp, printed notes, announce on the lesson, etc. I will also see the home work as an important thing to do and do it seriously.

            At these two points of view of McLuhan, I have different opinion with him. I think that the content means more then the medium in these two cases. Nevertheless, McLuhan have many others idea and theory in the big idea “Medium is the message”, maybe we can discuss wider and deeper in the future.

Student Name: Tsang CheukWah