The Medium is The Massage

The Medium isThe Massage
Blog Response 

Julia Weiss

I have to say, the Medium is the Massage is probably the fastest I’ve ever read a 154 page book; probably because all of the pictures, which I also have to say are quite interesting. From what I understand, this book is a visual breakdown of how society today is molding itself in correspondence to media.
             It’s true in all honesty, the book looked at how at the beginning, places like Greece used oral communication (before written), and their original societal structure was completely changed with the introduction to written communication and the art of rhetoric. They then formed into a democracy, and developed a wide variety of diversity and advancement.

A change in mediums of communication directly affects the format of society and the context by which we live. Our advancements have led us to a place of digital media as a source of culture. We have somehow managed to link ourselves in every aspect of our life. We represent ourselves through media on a personal level, physical level and emotional level. We as a society have begun our identification through digital means, over action, but that is my opinion. We use digital media to shape the opinions of our society; for example, politics uses digital media as a tool to persuade the minds of everyday citizens in favor towards or against something. With quality digital rhetoric, we have introduced society into a way to exist without living. The book illustrates how clothes are merely an extension of our skin, how words are merely an extension of our thoughts, and that leads me to wonder if digital media is merely an extension of cultural personality, broken down into individual personalities of the people within.

“The eye – it cannot choose but tosee; we cannot bid the ear be still; our bodies feel, where’er they be, againstor with our will” – Wordsworth

This describes rationality, the means of making sense of reality, however if digital media is a means by which we attempt to capture or represent reality, then our original sense of rationality discovered through direct senses is compromised. Perhaps we see only symbols (mere representations – like a photo), we here electronic noise (but do not witness how it is produced) and we feel with emotions that we as a society attach to digital symbolism. In other words, society has thrust itself forward into a reality where life is connected to symbols and the symbols are connected to senses. We have discovered a reality based off of detachment of actuality.