In the book, Writing for the Web: Composing, Coding, and Constructing Web Sites, scholar J. D. Applen takes Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote “the medium is the message”, examines it, and then basically ask: “Can media really makes us get better at getting the message?”
The Message of “The Medium is The Message”
First let us briefly explain McLuhan’s quote:
What McLuhan meant is that the medium that is created will always be more significant than whatever media is produced from it. While The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu is an important book, it is not as significant as the invention of the book or written text. Effect of the invention of written text will always be more important than a single piece of written text. No shade to Lady Murasaki.
So, can media Really make us better at getting the message?
Well… it depends.
While new technologies or mediums can open a lot of doors for information communication and distribution it can serve to be beneficial or not for information retention.
While certain mediums (like the internet, or television) can be a quick, convenient source of information, that convenience can cause us to not think as deeply about the information we process. Just because we have better access to information, doesn’t always mean that we can process that information effectively. We can get so use to how more obvious and explicit the information is that we don’t feel as great of a need to think deeper about it than a more ambiguous medium.
A Benefit of more ambiguous mediums
More ambiguous mediums (like books) can leave a lot more room for more thorough message retention than more convenient mediums. The more difficult search for desired information can prompt us to think more deeply about what were looking at. Thus allowing us to retain information better. Ambiguous mediums can lead readers to a deeper message.
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