The medium is the message. What does that exactly mean? According to Marshal McLuhan it means the nature of a medium is more important than the message itself. This I find pretty much right on point and also very disturbing.
We live in a world that is dependent on information and the ease of receiving such information. Where we once had to wait for travelers to bring us news from the far reaches of our imagination to newspapers and then radio and then to our modern age of the cell phone, the importance and integrity in the message seems to have been diminished as well as the we were receiving such message.
The phrase “Don’t shoot the messenger”, I’m sure comes from some violence brought upon an individual that had the hard job of delivering some type of bad news. It seems today we don’t even bat an eye to the messenger and at many times for a certain sect of people don’t even question the message. The messenger (the medium) for this thread has evolved from being a worthy source of truth into a vehicle of 1/2 truths and political agendas. We used to place a lot integrity in the way the medium delivered the message to us. Probably the last form of media that is still given that “trust” is through print. Newspapers place an immense amount of research into the stories they chose to run with. Unfortunately in our Hi speed age it has become hard to decide where to place that full trust. The same news story is told differently when comparing from FoxNews, CNN, and ABC. That skew in information to specific audiences are what I believe is the danger in our society.
As our world continues to become more connected digitally and up to the second news, we seem to become more divided by the sources that play upon our differences. As our nation sits on a powder keg full of fears and anxiety we feel a moment of relief by removing a near by flame. But is it enough?? Or has the medium of the last 4 years played to the fears and insecurities of those receiving a message filled with hate shrouded with false patriotism, done irreparable harm? I guess we will have to wait and see….
