McLuhan's "media is massage" era media significance

Source: Audiovisual, No. 6, 2019

Abstract: The "media is massage" view in the book "Media is Massage", as another communication view after Marshall McLuhan's "media is information", has the perspective of the times and the significance of the media. As an important scholar in the history of communication, McLuhan's main ideas deserve our in-depth analysis and exploration. This paper will understand the media significance of the "media as massage" viewpoint from the aspects of media as film and media as environment, and discuss how media constructs the human social environment and its important impact on human society.

First, the media is the era of massage

Marshall McLuhan has a highly accomplished and advanced media vision in the field of communication studies. Medium as Massage is another of McLuhan's most powerful works after Medium as Message, in which he sharply judges the connection between media and human life with his unique media vision and poetic text. The whole book shows us a vivid history of media environment change in graphic form, that is, how the media machine invented by humans constructs the human environment, and how the environment that is constructed affects human beings themselves. The view that the medium is massage, as another reflection on the medium by McLuhan, contains a deeper connotation, which is worthy of our reflection and exploration. McLuhan said in his rearview mirror view: "We look at the present in the rearview mirror, we look backwards and move towards the future. ”

"Looking at the old environment through the mirror of the new environment, but ignoring the new mirror. New technologies create a culture of bruce, just as the old technology still inspires 'hallucinatory pain' after its demise. From the age of speaking to the age of words to the age of interconnection, human beings have experienced the "public consciousness" brought by printing to the "popular view" produced by the telegraph, the generation of each medium always brings a certain degree of panic, the production of computers has once again subverted the relationship between the traditional media era, and the audience who is accustomed to a single output model is once again pulled back to the center of public opinion, they learn to think instead of just accepting, they speak out instead of just identifying.

Second, massage? How to massage!

"Massage? How to massage!" This is the first question McLuhan asks in his book, and it is more of a warning than a problem. The medium changes people, always with an effect that paralyzes people's consciousness, in the society before the emergence of the alphabet, the ear dominated our view of the world, the emergence of papyrus ended the civilization ruled by the ear, the cult of words brought by printing eliminated the mystery of perceptual cognition, religion is no longer a high-level knowledge that only a few priests can grasp, the linear editing and coherence followed by printing constitute a rational life, and the linear text composed of words is quietly changing our perceptual way of thinking. If the sensory organs can so profoundly affect the way we perceive the world, then the change of the medium must be a force to be reckoned with.

We live in an era that is constantly being reconstructed and reshaped by the media, and it is of great significance to understand the media environment as an ecological environment. In the environment constructed by the medium, we adapt, get used to it and even indulge, and this extraordinary adaptability that humans show is the ability to extend in the media environment, and different media as different extensions of the senses help us understand the environment more comprehensively. McLuhan argues that "due to the addition of a medium or technology, in a way the body extends outward all the way into the environment, and as a medium, this extension takes place between the body and the environment, thus protecting the body from environmental harm and becoming the new environment of the body." "The media as a human contact with the environment of the tentacles affect its mode of perceiving the world, each extension of the tentacles is also a human self amputation behavior, we use the medium instead of sensory functions, from the real feeling into the virtual experience, this medium massage is paralyzing self-consciousness, accepting the mimetic environment constructed by the medium, in the media vortex, we are willingly swirling in the center."

Third, the media builds the environment, and the environment creates personality

McLuhan said: "The environment created by man becomes his medium, through which man defines his role in the environment. "What do we define ourselves by? Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud once proposed the concept of the self, the self and the superego, and then the psychologist George Hutt Mead proposed the concept of the subject and the object self from the perspective of communication, showing that there are different levels of "me" in the social environment, the media acts as a feedbacker in the process of self-knowledge, different media make us feel the self of different environments, and different media environments create different eras of self.

The medium is massage, that is, the medium is the membrane. The medium is the membrane, showing that the medium provides an extended form with protective meaning and temperature and humidity for our perception of the environment. The environment is invisible, but the five senses can be perceived, the medium in addition to being an extension of the five senses, but also extended to the "skin" that wraps the whole body, the media skin measures the real society with the temperature of the medium, and then transmits specific feelings back to the brain, and finally forms an environment that we understand. The environment formed by different media is determined by the nature of the medium itself, and different media have different skin temperatures, and this temperature determines the difference in our perception of the environment.

However, the medium extends into the skin while it also builds the environment. The medium is massage, which is the proof that the medium is the environment, and the medium is changing our perception of our surroundings, diving into our hearts, thoughts, and actions in a way that numbs people. The emergence of printing technology brought childhood, religious freedom, public opinion; electronic technology changed the dominance of theology, promoted the development of science, but also caused the "disappearance of childhood", as if back to the papyrus period; the Internet age changed the traditional mode of audience one-way reception of messages in the way of dissemination, different media to build different environments, and the media to build the environment is inescapable of human beings, we can choose to use the media in a way that violates the bias of the media itself or away from the media, but we cannot escape the established social media environment. The production of each medium will build a matching media environment, which will eventually show a sense of fit more and more in line with human functions and attributes under the protection of the media film, so that we show strong adaptability and cooperation ability in this unfamiliar environment, we will not only not be surprised by technological innovation, but also insensitive to its impact.

Bookworms, TV people, container people, mouse hands, low-headed people... These new words are produced in different media environments, different media environments create different media personalities, and different media personalities react from the virtual world to the real society, and finally complete a closed loop of transmission. Every action and reaction will always bring a series of harms, and the media and technology will not only provide services for us, but also bring more subtle effects. The virtuality of the online world makes it possible to role-play, and at this point, confusing multiple personalities are created. The media, that is, massage, embodies the delicate techniques of this medium in which we show different real self-personalities or multiple personalities in different media environments, and the emergence of these personalities always perfectly fits the environment built by the current media.

The media, that is, massage, also reminds us to pay more attention to the hidden meaning behind the media, rather than just staring at the technical means of the media or the message conveyed by the media. Media technology is like a pair of invisible hands, according to its standards to fabricate human cognition and thinking, this pair of invisible hands are always invisibly massaged to eliminate the fatigue of daily life, experience the virtual pleasure, this pleasure in the electronic integration board and the central processor constantly switch, and the media unilateral interaction let us gradually withdraw from reality, the media plays the various roles required in life, confusing whether the machine or the person needed for daily life is a machine.

IV. Conclusion

Media is massage means that the medium affects the environment, both real and virtual, we create the medium, the medium provides the environment, the environment builds character. The essence of the environment is the reflection of human beings in the medium, and the essence of the environment is the common projection of human beings. Today's sharp conflict between the old and new environments is not only manifested between the traditional media environment and the new media environment, but also between the real environment and the virtual environment. Because of this, the birth of each technology will have a butterfly effect similar to the butterfly effect on our environment, that is, the emergence of each media technology will cause a wider range of environmental changes in addition to its own field. The medium, massage, is describing precisely such a fact.

In the Internet society, we can clearly feel that this interconnectivity generated by the Internet is much higher than the content it pushes on the electronic screen. The various correlations generated by the media technology itself promote the change of the social environment, the change of the complex virtual environment between "medium" and "human nature". James Carey said that we may find that our structure of consciousness has been reshaped to match the structure of communication, and we may find that we have become what we have created. The consequences of technology are always unpredictable, but in the era of rapid flow of information, information and feedback always produce results together, do not give people time to wait for discovery, and the consequences are unforeseeable but do not mean that it is inevitable.

Finally, to borrow a phrase from McLuhan: "As long as you are willing to think, what is happening is absolutely not inevitable." "As long as we stay awake in the vortex of information, we can understand how the environment built for us by the medium behind the information surge makes us crazy."

bibliography:

1. [Plus] Marshall McLuhan, [U.S.] Quentin Fiori, [U.S.] Jerome Argyll. Medium as Massage: A Glance at McLuhan's Media Effect[M].Translated by He Daokuan. Beijing:China Machine Press,2016.]

2. [United States] Lance Strat. McLuhan and Media Ecology[M].Translated by Julan Hu. Zhengzhou:Henan University Press,2016.]

3. [United States] Neil Bozeman. Seeing the disappearance of the city-state and childhood[M].Wu Yanying translation. Guilin:Guangxi Normal University Press,2004.]

(Author Affilications:Beijing Institute of Printing)