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Communication theorist, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” to describe the effects communication media have on a message. He contended the way communicators say something is as important as what they are saying. Actually, he argued the medium was more important.

“The content or message of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the casing of an atomic bomb.”

In a macro sense, as in the introduction of the Roman alphabet, Gutenberg press, or electronic media into culture, he argued media itself shaped the cultural environment to such an extent that the medium is more important than the words the alphabet formed, the printing press printed, or the electronic media broadcasted.

Each technological innovation rewired how people processed information and what they did with their time. The Roman alphabet, not the words it formed, reshaped thinking from pictures to words, from spatial to linear. It made changes as far as the east is from the west. Philosophers might point to Aristotle and Confucius to highlight the differences between the cultures, McLuhan would indicate that the difference began with the western adoption of the Roman letters, instead of something like the logographic Chinese characters.

The printing press made orality antiquated and flattened time. After the mid-fifteenth century, readers could easily spend their leisure time in isolation interacting with thinkers from another time and place, instead of exchanging their heritage stories in their community, resulting in a less tribalism and more individualism. McLuhan would argue that it was not the words that the press printed that made post mid-fifteenth century generations more individualistic, but that the introduction of the printing press itself caused the transformation.

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The electronic media formed a global village that blurs the lines between here and there. The world came into the living room in McLuhan’s day and into the palm of user’s hands today. While it shrinks the world into a tiny screen, it also expands the users’ world. It creates a cultural fusion where the East and West constantly churn and blend resulting in fewer distinctions, less privacy, and more awareness. McLuhan argued that it was not the words that producers broadcasted that ushered in these changes, but the electronic media itself.

Most of the time, when McLuhan used the phrase “the medium is the message” he was referring to this macro sense of how media shapes its environment and does more to influence people than the words spoken, read, or heard. However, he does make an important distinction between hot and cold mediums. Some communication mediums, such the narrative form, invoke a higher level of participation from the audience. It is a cool medium requiring the use of multiple senses and mental capacities. Other communication mediums are hot, requiring only a single sense.

Pastoral Ministry in the Real World: Loving, Teaching, and Leading God’s People, © 2015 by Jim L. Wilson