We all know of “The Media is the Message”, which has been explained in many different ways. Here’s one: our perceptions are shaped and formed through the means by which we receive them. (and see the paragraph below on his “hot” and “cold” media messages.)
McLuhan talked a lot about the effects on civilizations of the printed page made possible by using movable type. As noted, it’s not really possible to reduce his writing to just one chunk of explanation of the difference between looking and reading. But perhaps if we stop and think what we are doing when reading, we can get an inkling of what he’s talking about.
For one thing, we are shutting out all our other senses as much as we can, and putting all our attention on a narrow field where the type exists, generally less than a foot or so wide, and consisting usually of black ink on white paper. Or black pixels on white background for a computer tablet.
What are we doing with our eyes over and over and over again?
We are focusing on a small area that includes a phonetic symbol, and we are moving our eyes on a line from left to right…and attempting to perceive “words” and put those words into a meaningful sentence. And that’s all we are doing…leaving the rest of our perceptive apparatus to simply standby. We are so used to doing that, we don’t see just how strange that activity is, and how spending so much time perceiving the world in that way creates a particular consciousness that then affects us, society, the economy and our civilization. That’s “The Media is The Message”. Whew!
from Wikipedia:
Throughout Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan uses historical quotes and anecdotes to probe the ways in which new forms of media change the perceptions of societies, with specific focus on the effects of each medium as opposed to the content that is transmitted by each medium.
McLuhan identified two types of media: “hot” media and “cool” media. This terminology does not refer to the temperature of c course, but to the degree of participation. Cool media are those that require high participation from users, due to their low definition (the receiver/user must fill in missing information). Since many senses may be used, they foster involvement. Conversely, hot media are low in audience participation due to their high-resolution or definition.
Film, for example, is defined as a hot medium, since in the context of a dark movie theater, the viewer is completely captivated, and one primary sense—visual—is filled in high-definition. In contrast, television is a cool medium, since many other things may be going on and the viewer has to integrate all of the sounds and sights in the context.
Perhaps Wikipedia could use an update, because today, TV has much greater resolution than previously and can offer a similar experience at home in a darkened living room on a “home theater” type “screen”. Wikipedia above also misses the huge impact of the sound track blasted through huge and multiple speakers in the theater, and similar now possible “at home” too. There’s still more to notice about how our perception is affected…as at home, there’s more distractions, pets, kids, text and phone messages, etc…so we are having a multiple perception moment, which is very much what we do all day long.
Combining and enveloping ourselves in a multiple media environment, that includes reading text mode while at the same time, perhaps also aural mode such as podcasts, and being in a holistic video and AR and VR mode…that’s a lot to process, and it is certainly affecting our modes of perception, our sense of what is real, and our sense of who we are in that media crammed “New Place.”
McLuhan then, helps us get started with thinking in a “it’s the media stupid” way, but we still need a frame of reference to “get” or fully understand what is happening to us today. (or what we are doing to ourselves today).
McLuhan generally wouldn’t give a unified frame of reference for media effects, other than to say the “newest media” reveals the former media’s effects. Instead he suggested the way to know how media was part of creating our world, was to look to what resulted from it all around us, and how things had changed from the previous civilization forms and structures.