"...And who are you?"

Have you ever read The Medium is the Massage (No, that's not a typo...at least not on my part) by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore?  Well, let me tell you, it's a trip and a half.  It is chock full of non-sequitur, if not downright bizarre, images.  However, after carefully reading the text, I found the book is actually a lot of interesting ideas.  Probably one of the best labels for this book is "thought-provoking."

Basically what this book is about is media, how it can influence those who use it, and how it is virtually reshaping the way we live.  Although this book was originally written and published in the 1960's, it is still quite relevant in this day and age.  Apparently, the original title was to be The Medium is the Message, but a misprint influenced McLuhan to change the title.  Now, this title alone is quite indicative of the idea the book is trying to express.  A medium isn't just how we say something these days, it is what we're saying.  If you change the medium, you change the message.

It's best we just don't ask questions

A classmate of mine recently made a comment about how it seems McLuhan had an idea that he wanted to put down as quickly as possible before he lost it.  While I can see how it may seem this way, my close reading leads me to believe that the brevity and sometimes vagueness of this book is entirely intentional.  It is my thinking that this books was never intended to be an answer or an explanations, but an instigator of thought and conversation.  We are supposed to explore and create our own meanings.  A few times throughout the book, McLuhan quotes Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  Now, there is little doubt that this story in itself was meant as a social commentary (some provide that it was a protest to modern mathematics) or a though-provoker.  Toward the end of Medium (pg. 153-154), McLuhan gives us a quote from Carroll's book:

"...And who are you?"  This part of the book really grabbed me.  Who are we?  Do we really know the complete, full answer to that?  Alice's response really got me thinking.  Does technology change who we are?  Honestly, to me there seems little doubt.  We may be one person when we get up in the morning, but when we enter that Wonderland of the Internet, we may change several times.  In the anonymity of the internet, someone may become more argumentative or give less thought to what they're saying before they do so.  A normally timid and shy person may become an opinionated columnist, blogger, or forum member.  A real-life doer may become simply an observer.  On the internet, we can be whoever we want to be.  We adopt a persona and, in many cases, our internet selves take on a new life of their own.  For some, they may even have several online personas.  

Of course, the internet is not the only place for this to happen.  Before the invention of the world-wide web there were ghost writers, pirate radio stations, and several other media outlets for individuals to become someone else.  This is an idea that I honestly gave very little thought to, but once McLuhan brought up the subject, it sparked a lot of thought.  And the fact that he can do this over the span of about four decades is simply astounding.  The "vagueness" of this book is what allows it to transcend time.  It is more than possible that this book may retain is relevance over the next four decades and on.  This book is fuel for the fire of thought.

If you have not yet read Medium, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy and give it a read.  For those of you who have read it, feel free to share your thoughts.  Better yet, how about you attempt to answer me this one questions "...Who are you?"