Marshall McLuhan’s 'Understanding New Media': summary and critique

1. Main arguments

1.1 McLuhan’s definition of a medium

For McLuhan, a medium is “any extension of ourselves” (p. 7), whereby one or more of our senses is extended in an artificial form. For example, the wheel is considered an extension of the foot, clothing an extension of the skin and the book an extension of the eye.


1.2 The medium is the message

McLuhan’s claim is that it is not so much the content of the medium that is important in understanding the significance of media, but rather the nature of the medium itself. The content is simply another medium – speech has become writing, which has become print, which has in turn been succeeded by the telegraph (p. 8). What we say to one another through these various media is of no concern, what matters is the implications of the new format. The content of the media, he says, actually blinds us to the radically transformative character of the medium itself (p. 9).


1.3 Media hot and cold

McLuhan divides all media into two categories: hot and cool. Hot media extend one single sense in high definition (i.e. they provide a large amount of information). Because of this they require little participation and supplementation on the part of the media-user. Cool media are the reverse of this, extending one sense in low definition and requiring high participation. The photograph, the radio and typography are examples of hot media while cartoons, the phone, ideography and speech are examples of cool media.


1.4 From the mechanical to the digital age

McLuhan argues that the development of new, digital forms of media have radically transformed humanity’s outlook and system of thought.

A key characteristic of this new world is the implosion of time and space. Because digital technology facilitates instant communication, it is “abolishing time and space as far as our planet is concerned” (p. 3). Whereas in the mechanical age, events proceeded in sequences, permeated by gaps of time, in the digital era, everything is instantaneous. As a consequence of this, we can no longer be detached from the consequences of our actions (pp. 5 - 6).

McLuhan claims that digital media has dissolved the individual consciousness of the typographical world into the shared, universal consciousness of the electronic world. The use of digital media consists of the extension of the central nervous system into one shared system – a world consciousness (p. 87).

Since the world of mechanical media, according to McLuhan, demanded fragmentation and linearity, the unified, instantaneous digital world is causing the disintegration of key characteristics of Western society (p. 268). Moreover, we are unable to grasp what is happening. Like tribal societies confronting the technology of colonists, we are unable to comprehend the fundamental changes which are transforming us. Social institutions, particularly the education system, must be radically reorganised if it is to adapt to this new era (p. 390)


2 The strengths and weaknesses of McLuhan's arguments

In the course of his argument, McLuhan astutely observes that “every culture and every age has its favourite model of perception and knowledge that it is inclined to prescribe for everybody and everything” (p. 6) but then proceeds to do exactly that in his own attempt to explain all aspects of human life in terms of a grandiose media meta-narrative. He goes as far as to claim that media is at the root of modern warfare (p. 22), that getting people to watch TV as opposed to listen to the radio would solve the problems of ethnic conflict in the developing world (p. 30) and that Shakespeare’s plays are best interpreted as an exploration of the impact of media (p. 10).

Equally frustrating is McLuhan’s refusal to provide any empirical evidence for his claims. For example, he asserts that modern technology is “swiftly and profoundly recreating the conditions and attitudes of primitive tribal man in ourselves”, sweeping away the individualism characteristic of the typographical era (p. 258) yet gives no real evidence for this. In a society which appears to most commentators to be more individualistic than previous eras, such a claim demands substantiation.

McLuhan certainly has a tendency to overemphasise his case. It is true that time and space have been abolished as far as the limits upon communication are concerned, but they still structure the movement of our bodies and physical objects. And even in communication, space is a key factor in determining who one wants to instantaneously communicate with – we still talk most frequently with people who are physically accessible. Likewise, new media may have radically altered our society, but it is very difficult to see how they have ushered in a parallel total transformation in human thinking – are the thought patterns of previous generations really so utterly alien?

McLuhan’s central dichotomy between hot and cool media is also suspect. Why does he assume a consistent relationship between the extension of a sense and the degree of participation required? A book is considered a hot medium, and yet it requires more participation than the supposedly cool medium of TV (in that the reader is required to translate the words into imagery and sound himself). The medium of the computer extends the sense of the eye just as much as a book (hot), and yet it requires even greater participation.

However, the flaws in McLuhan’s argument tend to obscure its merits. His central claim that the form of a media makes a huge impact upon society is undoubtedly true, something which was ignored prior to McLuhan. Thus we have good reason to be grateful for McLuhan’s unguarded willingness to espouse radically innovative intellectual frameworks. His frequent errors and exaggerations are only to be expected from a pioneering foray into unexplored intellectual territory.

Likewise, McLuhan may have exaggerated what he saw, but that does not mean he hallucinated it. There has indeed been a dramatic implosion of time and space – McLuhan was a leading pioneer in the study of globalisation.

With instant electric technology, the globe itself can never again be more than a village (p. 375)

What matters most is that McLuhan succeeded in transforming the nature of media studies, and in prompting academics to perceive aspects of the mechanics of our society to which they had previously been blind. So while Understanding New Media is an enormously problematic work, it is also, taken in context, impressively insightful and prophetic.

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