Did you ever have that word that you’ve been misspelling since junior high school, and just figured it out?

So, I’m wandering Manchester-by-the-Book, one of my favorite small bookstores (where I discovered one of my favorite books ever, James Salter’s Burning the Days), and I stumble on The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan.

Wait, isn’t it ‘The Medium is the Message‘?

Well, no. All my life I’ve thought the book was named after his famous saying, but no. Apparently, it’s a semi-intentional pun. The Medium “massages” us, manipulates us. Sound familiar?

But this is 1967, the internet is not really a thing, there are faint stirrings of Arpanet, but no Twitter, no web browser, no Facebook, no TikTok. There’s really just TV and Radio. I open to a random page and find:

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.

All
media
are
extensions
of
some
human
faculty-
psychic
or
physical.

OK so that is ahead of its time. The book is attractive in a 1960-ish way, all strangely formatted text, black and white photographs, illustrations on every page, pages you have to read in the mirror because they are printed backwards….sold.

I take it home and start reading more seriously. 

The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions-the patterns of mechanistic technologies-are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank-that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early “mistakes”.

Ever posted something on TikTok/IG/Facebook you wanted to take back? Ever worried about the ever-growing Surveillance State, or Surveillance Advertising? McLuhan is on the case, in 1967 before it all existed. 

I’m about halfway through the book, and so far, here’s the money quote:

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. 

….

It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media.

The 24×7 outrage machine we call the internet: do you understand how deeply your worldview is shaped by what you read? Or don’t read? The news sources you visit, or don’t visit? The media you consume, or don’t? How deeply what you see is impacted by the monetary imperatives of the media? (ALL of them, not just the bad guys, whoever they are for you!).

As Ryan Holiday says, “If you start your day with social media, the news, or email, realize: you’re starting your day at the mercy of others.“

A lot of people are coming to realize that much of the modern internet really just isn’t good for us. And yet, can you get away from it?

The first step is being aware. That pretty much everything that comes at you has an agenda. Question it. Why am I being told this now? What is the (economic/political/marketing) motivation for them to tell me? Does it resonate with my worldview? If so, maybe it’s false – just a re-enforcing echo chamber? Question all that you read, watch and hear, especially if it re-enforces your worldview or agrees with your intuition.

And read a book now and then :). The Medium is the Massage is a fun way to start – fast, thought-provoking, and fun. If you want to really embrace the ambiance of this book, throw on Philip Glass’s soundtrack to the cult film Koyaanisqatsi.

Because getting a massage should be good.