The Medium is (totally tied to) the Message

   Why do I feel like if I had eaten a pot brownie or something this article would have become clearer to me sooner than it did on just coffee and cereal? Mr. McLuhan, dude, you wrote an article that somehow managed to both oversimplify AND dig extremely deep all at once ;-).  I sure hope we won’t be docked for sarcasm…I’ll be in big trouble!
   So on to the “two or three interesting ideas from the article.” I think that what McLuhan is really trying to say in this article is simply to be cognizant of the medium you choose for a particular message because they're undeniably interconnected. That’s it…a message you want to deliver is inevitably effected by the media by which it is delivered. A few passages that stuck out and brought me to the aforementioned conclusion:

   “…because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” To me, this is why to get work done or share information you’d probably choose email as the medium, whereas if you needed to deliver news of someone’s death or other tragedy you’d probably choose face to face.

   “…’content’ blinds us to the character of the medium.” With this quote I see his point, but disagree. Say I’m in real estate trying to sell a home to a client. If I were to pull up on a Harley (my McLuhan style ‘medium’) and say “this is a great home, perfect for you and your family,” versus pulling up in a Mercedes (new ‘medium’) and saying the exact same words (message), I do believe the ‘character’ of the Harley versus the ‘character’ of the Mercedes would indeed be noticed. My two mediums bring with them different connotations. My Mercedes medium implies that I’m a yuppie who probably knows what I’m talking about when it comes to real estate and that I can be trusted, whereas the Harley…well, not so much. It would be nice if people would be ‘blind’ to the difference of showing up on a Harley or in a Mercedes simply because my content stated “trust me, buy this house,” but it just doesn’t work that way. Would the ‘content’ “your Mom just passed away” ‘blind’ any of us to how insensitive, impersonal, rude and downright wrong it would be to deliver that message via email? Sorry McLuhan, I’m not fully stretch’n quite that far, but I get it.                                   
'Til next time, Sharxjay out.