Define Media

Define Media

At first, I thought I understood the meaning of the word media but when I began to do a deeper analysis around what media is, I noticed my definition was not complete.  For me media was any type of information exchange between two or more people with a message inside. But now I see how my definition of media was lacking more thought. Media is information that communicates a certain meaning between two or more people, whether it is on advertisement, internet, or by face to face. I am not only talking about words but almost everything that can be seen as an information message is media.  As talked in McLuhan’s article w can see the different types the media, their different effects and the involvement it has with the human beings.  My evolved definition of media is the communication between people by the use of different mediums in where it brings a message to another person causing different effects on each human being.

Today, our generation lives around the media, media is everywhere and we as humans do not actually see how the media affects our behavior. We see media as mediums around the city, state or country in advertisements, computers, work, and news and little by little we receive a message from it. The message that we end up receiving turns out to make us react differently to different situations. McLuhan’s article separates into two the different types of mediums, the hot mediums and the cool mediums.  The main difference between these two mediums is that a hot medium is “one that extends one single sense in high definition. High definition is the state of being well filled with data”(22).  McLuhan describes a seminar as a cool media and a lecture as a hot media. To describe them easier a lecture is a hot media because it uses mainly only one sense like hearing. In comparison, a seminar has less “high definition” and requires for the person to use more than one sense.  The cool and hot medius can be also a way to show the message differently, a cool medium can be seen differently depending on each person and their creativity and imagination but that hot medium would not be able since it carries more data. Most people will think that the medium bring the message but they do not see how a medium can bring the message but also the medium is the message. McLuhan later describes this relationship on his article.

McLuhan’s said how “the medium is the message” and uses an example of a light bulb to explain how the medium carries the message inside and without carrying any content. He compares how a newspaper and a light bulb. Most people see how a newspaper which is the medium brings the message. The message it is the text written inside but McLuhan argues that a light bulb which is the medium is also the message. He supports his idea saying that the light bulb might not bring any content but by creating light, it creates an atmosphere for the people which end ups being the message.

To conclude, now I can see how media has shaped our society up until today. Both type of media, since the time when our society was mostly oral, the message develop and little by little our society change, from cool mediums to hot mediums. In the future we will see how media continues to move and influence our society.