The Medium Is the Message

Marshall McLuhan? Ashley Montagu? Edmund Carpenter? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan contemplated the influences of different types of media on human thought and behavior. He said that television was a cool medium because it was high in participation, whereas radio was a hot medium with low participation. He formulated the adage:

The medium is the message.

Would you please help me to find a citation?

Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in a conference titled “Radio in the Future of Canada” held in Vancouver, Canada in May 1958. Marshall McLuhan’s speech contained two versions of the saying. The first instance used the plural words “media” and “messages”. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:^[1]1958, Radio in the Future of Canada: A National Conference, Held in Vancouver, Canada on May 5 to 9, 1958, Article: Introduction of Professor Marshall McLuhan, Start Page 4, Quote Pages 4 and 6, … Continue reading

The media are the messages, they are not conveyor belts of messages. In the long run it is radio that is the message, and not what a radio program content happens to be at any given day, or year. In the long run, it is photography that is the meaning and the message, not the picture of somebody or something.

The second instance of the saying in McLuhan’s’ speech matched the popular version of the expression:

Print, by permitting people to read at high speed and, above all, to read alone and silently, developed a totally new set of mental operations. What I mentioned earlier becomes very relevant here: the medium is the message. The medium of print is the message, more than any individual writer could say.

Thanks to Andrew McLuhan, the grandson of Marshall McLuhan, who told QI about the citation presented above.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1933 a precursor expression using the word “method” instead of “medium” appeared in “The Christian Century: A Journal of Religion” within an article by Richard Roberts about a religious organization called the “Oxford Group”. The “method” referred to a multi-part process consisting of testimonial, confession, penitence, and avowal:^[2]1933 February 1, The Christian Century: A Journal of Religion, The Oxford Group By Richard Roberts, Start Page 147, Quote Page 147, Published by the Christian Century Press, Chicago, Illinois. … Continue reading

One leading member of the group said to me, “The method is the message and the message is the method.” The method, then comes up for discussion first. The procedure in brief is this: first, public testimony to a changed life made by members of the group …

Anthropologist Edmund Carpenter was a friend and colleague of McLuhan. Carpenter suggested that the crafting of the phrase “the medium is the message” was partially inspired by the earlier phrase “the method is the message”. See the 2001 citation presented further below.

In 1955 anthropologist Ashley Montagu published “The Direction of Human Development: Biological and Social Bases”. The epigraph of Appendix A was the following:^[3] 1955, The Direction of Human Development: Biological and Social Bases by M. F. Ashley Montagu, Appendix A: Learning Theory, Quote Page 317, Harper & Brothers, New York. (Verified with scans)

The method is the message. —Anon.

In 1956 “The Evening Star” of Washington, D.C. printed an advertisement from a local church which included the following statement:^[4] 1956 December 8, The Evening Star, (Advertisement for a church on Wilson Boulevard), Quote Page A9, Column 4, Washington, D.C. (GenealogyBank)

“THE METHOD IS THE MESSAGE”

In May 5, 1958 Marshall McLuhan delivered a lecture at a conference titled “Radio in the Future of Canada”, and he employed the saying under examination as mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Shortly afterward McLuhan published an article titled “Mass Communication’s Role in Meeting Today’s Problems” in the “Proceedings of the Conference on Educational Television” held May 26-28, 1958. His paper used the expression twice:^[5]1958, Proceedings of the Conference on Educational Television, Under the Auspices of the Office of Education, In Cooperation with the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, Held May 26-28, … Continue reading

The 18th century considered it had made quite a discovery when Buffon proclaimed that “the style is the man.” We should long ago have discovered that the medium is the message. The effect of reading is far more decisive than anything that gets said from moment to moment on the page. The page is not a conveyer belt for pots of message; it is not a consumer item so much as a producer of unique habits of mind …

McLuhan re-emphasized the expression later in the article:

Let us grant for the moment that the medium is the message. It follows that if we study any medium carefully we shall discover its total dynamics and its unreleased powers.

In October 1958 “NAEB Journal” published “Our New Electronic Culture: The Role of Mass Communication in Meeting Today’s Problems” by Marshall McLuhan. NAEB was the acronym of the U.S. organization National Association of Educational Broadcasters. McLuhan employed the saying:^[6]1958 October, NAEB Journal, Volume 18, Number 1, Our New Electronic Culture: The Role of Mass Communication in Meeting Today’s Problems by Marshall McLuhan, Start Page 19, Quote Page 20, Column 1, … Continue reading

We should long ago have discovered that the medium is the message. The effect of reading is far more decisive than anything that gets said from moment to moment on the page.

The Spring 1959 issue of “Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences” contained an instance within an article titled “Myth and Mass Media” by Marshall McLuhan:^[7]1959 Spring, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Issue Theme: Myth and Mythmaking, Volume 88, Number 2, Myth and Mass Media by Marshall McLuhan, Start Page 339, Quote Page … Continue reading

As such, languages old and new would seem to be for participation rather than for contemplation or for reference and classification.

Another way of getting at this aspect of languages as macromyths is to say that the medium is the message. Only incidentally, as it were, is such a medium a specialized means of signifying or of reference.

In March 1960 “The Seminar on the Education of the AV Communication Specialist” was held during the annual convention of the Department of Audiovisual Instruction in Cincinnati, Ohio. McLuhan participated and shared a paper titled “Electronics and the Changing Role of Print”:^[8]1960, Audio Visual Communication Review, Volume 8, Number 5, Section 5: Influence of New Technological Developments, Electronics and the Changing Role of Print by Marshall McLuhan, Start Page 74, … Continue reading

I have insisted that any new structure for codifying experience and for moving information, be it alphabet or photography, has the power of imposing its structural character and assumptions upon all levels of our private and social lives, even without benefit of concepts or of conscious acceptance. That is what I’ve always meant by “the medium is the message.”

In June 1960 McLuhan and W. H. Allen produced a document titled “Report on Project in Understanding New Media”. The conclusion contained another instance of the adage:^[9]1961, Audio Visual Communication Review, Volume 9, Number 4, Title VII Research Abstracts Installment I, (Excerpt from conclusion of “Report on Project in Understanding New Media” dated June 1960 … Continue reading

The medium determines the modes of perception and the matrix of assumptions within which objectives are set; that is, “the medium is the message.” Not only is the medium the message, but “information” or “content” of any medium is always another medium. It still becomes necessary to understand any medium in all its levels and manifestations in order to have any critical awareness of “message.”

In 1963 “Audio Visual Communication Review” published a piece by Roger Brown which reviewed two recent works by McLuhan. Brown presented an interpretation of McLuhan’s adage:^[10]1963, Audio Visual Communication Review, Volume 11, Number 6, Review Title: Inside the McLuhan Galaxy, Review Author: Roger Brown, Reviewed Works: “The Gutenberg Galaxy; The Making of Typographic … Continue reading

McLuhan, unlike the majority of those measuring the effects of media in terms of persuasive or informative content, suggests that the major effects of the media are to be related to their intrinsic nature as technological devices.

Any medium (prose, poetry, television) has a specific way of viewing the world. In terms of epigram, “The medium is the message.” The nature of the medium imposes on content a characteristic structuring, and this in its turn, over time, has an effect on the sensibilities of the recipient.

In 1964 McLuhan published “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, and he titled the first chapter “The Medium Is the Message”:^[11] 1964, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan, Chapter 1: The Medium Is the Message, Quote Page 7, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. (Verified with scans)

In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

McLuhan attempted to clarify what he meant by the term “message”:^[12] 1964, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan, Chapter 1: The Medium Is the Message, Quote Page 8, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. (Verified with scans)

For the “message” of any medium or technology is the change, of scale of pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure.

By 1967 the saying had become a cliché, and McLuhan decided to playfully alter it. He and graphic designer Quentin Fiore published a book with “massage” in the title instead of “message”:^[13] 1967, The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, Quote Page 10, Bantam Books, New York. (Verified with hardcopy)

“The Medium is the Massage” is a look-around to see what’s happening. It is a collide-oscope of interfaced situations

In 1970 McLuhan published “Culture Is Our Business” which contained another pun:^[14] 1970, Culture Is Our Business by Marshall McLuhan, Section: Author’s Note, Quote Page 7, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. (Verified with scans)

Today, through ads, a child takes in all the times and places of the world “with his mother’s TV.” He is gray at three. By twelve he is a confirmed Peter Pan, fully aware of the follies of adults and adult life in general. … (This is not a value judgment. E.g., it would have been self-defeating for me to have said years ago “the medium is the mess-age”: such judgments distract attention from the events and processes that need to be understood.)

In 2001 “The Virtual Marshall McLuhan” included an appendix with an article by McLuhan’s colleague Edmund Carpenter titled “That Not-So-Silent Sea” which presented an insight into the genesis of the expression under examination:^[15]2001, The Virtual Marshall McLuhan by Donald F. Theall, Appendix B: That Not-So-Silent Sea by Edmund Carpenter, Start Page 236, Quote Page 244, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, Canada. … Continue reading

“The medium is the message,” came from Ashley Montagu’s lecture, “The Method is the Message,” which Marshall & I attended. Marshall improved the wording and extended the concept.

Andrew McLuhan, the grandson of Marshall McLuhan, discovered the presence of the quotation in the May 1958 speech. Andrew discussed his grandfather, and this famous saying during a seminar he presented that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube in June 2020.^[16]YouTube video, Title: The Medium is the Message: seminar led by Andrew McLuhan, Uploaded on June 23, 2020, Uploaded by: The McLuhan Institute, (First quotation starts at 17 minute 19 seconds of 1 … Continue reading

In conclusion, Marshall McLuhan deserves credit for the expression under examination based on the May 1958 citation. In later years McLuhan constructed punning variants.

Image Notes: Illustration of modern media and technologies depicted as a tree from geralt at Pixabay. Image has been resized.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Arthur McLuhan who discovered the presence of the adage in the May 5, 1958 speech, and who notified QI. Special thanks to the Rare Books & Special Collections librarians at the University of British Columbia. They accessed the conference proceedings containing the May 5, 1958 speech by McLuhan and provided QI with pertinent scans. Additional thanks to Pete Morris who located the May 26-28, 1958 citation. Also, thanks to researcher Fred R. Shapiro whose reference “The New Yale Book of Quotations” listed the helpful 1959 citation and pointed to the comments of Edmund Carpenter about the precursor expression.

Update History: On August 30, 2022 citations with the following dates were added to the article: 1933; 1955; December 1956; May 5-9, 1958; October 1958; 2001; and June 2020. On September 3, 2022 the May 26-28, 1958 citation was added to the article.