Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium Is The Massage"

The results have come in for the essay assignment in which we were to write about a book and explain it's theories in our own terms, using our own examples in order to demonstrate our understanding. I wrote about Marshall Mcluhan's The Medium Is The Massage. I quite enjoyed writing this essay as McLuhan had some great theories in the field of electronic media for a man of the 1950s. I also enjoyed taking his theories and applying them to modern technology and media. For example, his theory of amateurism and professionalism, I applied the case of the Zodiac murders where professional crackers were not able to solve the puzzle, whereas, upon release to the general public, a teacher and his housewife cracked the case in under a week. I feel like his theory of the "Global Village" can be applied to the modern technology of the Internet. Using this term, McLuhan was in fact referring to television and telephone system, however, I feel like the internet draws us into a global village even more-so today as we can not only watch and be seen by others on screens, but we can converse and using technologies such as Google maps - we can pinpoint and place ourselves anywhere in the world. I feel that through the internet and such McLuhan's Global Village is expanding still.

I am pleased to have received a high 2:1 for this essay.