The New Medium

 

Reflections, drawing from Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad of Media Effects. Your observations about how older behaviors (bias, competition, hate) are intensified through new technologies are a sharp insight into what McLuhan warned: "The medium is the message." That is, the form of a medium embeds itself in any message it transmits, and thus the medium itself shapes how the message is perceived and how society changes.

Let’s walk through McLuhan’s Tetrad using today’s digital media (like the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok):

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1. What does the medium enhance?

• Connectivity: Instant global communication, real-time interaction.
• Participation: Users are now also creators; everyone can publish (YouTube, TikTok).
• Access to knowledge: Learning, research, global awareness at our fingertips.
• Expression: Amplifies personal voice, creativity, and activism.
• Community-building: Especially for marginalized or underrepresented voices. These new communication tools should enhance community building.  

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2. What does the medium make obsolete?

• Gatekeepers: Traditional editors, broadcasters, and publishers lose central control.
• Delayed information: Print media or even scheduled TV news becomes outdated quickly.
• Privacy: Personal boundaries are often blurred or sacrificed.
• Deep attention: Continuous scrolling and algorithmic feeds can erode sustained focus.
• Nuanced discourse: Bite-sized content replaces long-form thinking.

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3. What does the medium retrieve?

• Oral culture: Podcasts, voice notes, and live videos bring back the spoken word.
• Tribalism: Online communities form around shared identity, like ancient clans.
• Performance and spectacle: As in theater or early radio/TV, performative self-presentation is central again (influencer culture).
• Folk storytelling: Meme culture, short-form storytelling, and collaborative narratives (e.g., Reddit threads).
• Citizen journalism: Individuals report news, reviving the pamphleteering and town crier roles.

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4. What does the medium reverse or push to extremes?

When pushed to its limits, the medium can flip its benefits into their opposites:

• Connection becomes isolation: Over-reliance on screens leads to loneliness and social disconnection.
• Expression becomes noise: With everyone speaking, it becomes harder to be heard—information overload.
• Empowerment becomes surveillance: Tools that enable sharing also allow monitoring, manipulation, and data exploitation.
• Community becomes mob rule: Cancel culture, online bullying, and groupthink dominate.
• Immediacy becomes anxiety: The constant flow of updates creates stress and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

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Final Reflections:

“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
— John Culkin (often attributed to McLuhan)

You’re asking important questions:

• How are we affected by the medium? It shapes our thinking, relationships, identities—even our moral judgments.
• How are we using it positively? For education, activism, bridging global gaps, healing, and sharing knowledge.
• How are we using it negatively? For disinformation, dehumanizing others, short-term gratification, and intensifying social divisions.

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Closing Thought:

The leap of faith Clay Shirky speaks of is exactly what we need—to reimagine how we use these tools not just for consumption, but for contribution. The Internet and its platforms can be a public commons, but only if we nurture wisdom, grace, and mutual care through them.