The Medium is the Message

My research originated from the urge of understanding what ‘Utopia’ truly is, and what attaining utopia would mean for the man kind. A journey through the history of the said concept led me to understand that ‘Utopia’ and ‘Dystopia’ are in fact one and the same. One man’s heaven is going to be a hell for the other. There is no universal utopia.

However, as Yasha Levine stated in his book and numerous interviews, internet lies at the crux of both: a promised global utopia and the dystopic reality of the contemporary world. Hence, in order to understand how the modern world has become a dystopic reality it is crucial to understand how the internet came into being and how it is being used to create utopic outcomes for a specific set of individuals.

During the process of understanding how advanced science and growing internet technology is taking over the world and planting the seeds of a totalitarian future (and present) I took a look at works of Gustav Le Bon which gave me key insights on what drives a crowd, and the work of Hannah Arendt that familiarized me with the working of totalitarian system with reference to the Jewish holocaust.

The combinations of readings I have done so far have led me to form the belief that mass media and technology are playing an important role in shaping the society in a dystopic or utopic manner; depending on which view one takes. Resultantly, I am looking at the iconic works of Marshal McLuhan. The “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. This underlines the point that “the medium is the message” because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action. The content or uses of such media are as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association. Indeed, it is only too typical that the “content” of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium.