Response to The Medium Is The Message

The article gave me great opportunity to have a fresh perspective at the meaning of “medium”, and the difference between content and message.

The most interesting part was when he said that the 60’s could still be applied in today’s media. For instance, according the article, “Characteristic of all media, means that the ‘“content’” of any medium is always another medium. … For each of the media is also a powerful weapon with which to clobber other media and other groups. The result is that the present age has been one of multiple civil wars that are not limited to the world of art and entertainment.”  

One of the reason why today’s social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube has been successful is that the content of its medium affects each other. Specifically, it could be possible to evolve the medium from the platform in which people can merely share their small moments to media which has power just like TV while they complement each other. For example, they share the account information and sync their post with each other so that make people easily approach to new media and consolidate their power.

However, one side which is scary is that the social media which has been the fastest and the most accessible form of mass media available today deliver the message regardless of their credibility. Moreover, people don’t care about the source of information anymore because medium today tend to focus on developing function which can spread message widely rather than developing function that lead to convey actual fact or distinguish the information based on the reliability. The medium is the message.

Therefore, it is the responsibility of the audience to receive that message and understand it. There is the idiom that “No language can fully express thought.(言不盡意)” Language can be said as medium and think as message. Word can not perfectly deliver what we think but now maybe we could worry about thought (the message) can be controlled by language (the medium). We are getting lost our ability to understand the message in our own way since there are a lot of overwhelming content pouring in. I think it’s the time people should be cautious about not letting medium control the message.