Our All-Consuming Society
Marshall McLuhan’s book The Medium is the Message discusses how the nature of different media mediums has shaped everything about communication and thought in societies throughout different media mediums such as; print and television. Something McLuhan touches on early in the book is the idea of neighborhoods and how interconnection operating technology controls time and space. “Nothing can be further from the spirit of new technology than ‘a place for everything and everything in its place.’ You can’t go home again.” This part of the book stood out to me because it acknowledges the understanding of ‘home’ in modern society in comparison to postmodern society. Modern largely print society there was the idea of the private space and everything should go in its place. Print and printed books helped develop the idea of the individual, and with literacy came the ability to form a personal point of view and the power of detachment. Whereas McLuhan points out the “instantaneous world of electric informational media involves all of us, all at once. No detachment of frame is possible.” This instantaneous world we live in leaves no room for one’s privacy to be completely different from another’s. This is an underlying factor of the bigger main concept that McLuhan is maintaining in his book; because of the everchanging media mediums we are more alike an ancient oral speaking society now than we are alike the more recent largely print societies.
A major change in society throughout time has always been the evolution of education. Education, however, has not evolved with new technological mediums. “Many of our institutions suppress all the natural direct experience of youth, who respond with untaught delight to the poetry and the beauty of the new technological environment, the environment of popular culture.” This is a very relevant issue that McLuhan recognizes, that institutions are not able to keep up with media that children absorb daily. Technology has made the attention span of a child different; their interests and understandings are different. However, the basic core subjects still are taught; Math, Science, English, Social studies, etc. These core subjects are still teaching necessities no one can take away, however, how we study needs to evolve. A recent example of this is the dispute about racial prejudice in the teaching of United States history. In the past year, there have been many schools reform their history lessons noticing the scarcity of diversity. As McLuhan said in 1964; “The classroom is now a vital struggle for survival with the immensely persuasive ‘outside’ buy new informational media. education must shift from instruction, from imposing of stencil’s, too probing and exploration and to the recognition of the language of forms.” I think in 2020 we are still struggling to integrate new media mediums into the classroom; however, the reforming of prejudice history textbooks is a stop in the right direction.
Altogether, the alteration of print society to our now visual world we again are more socially connected than ever. The concept of lagging education and never really being at home again all coincide with the new media mediums that Marshall McLuhan reasons. With constant information, and communication with people just a couple clicks away, our senses have been forever altered and we are closer than ever. We face anxiety around this time of change as McLuhan and many other scholars have acknowledged when new media mediums arise, with this anxiety we need to develop and learn from our mistakes and our success to living in a society that is not all-consuming, where the individual can also function and be dependent.
