An Analysis of The Echo-chamber: Marshall Mcluhan's The Medium is The Massage 

The Medium is the Massage, this particular quote speaks volumes towards the message McLuhan is trying to convey. The ear favors no particular point of view. You cannot filter what you hear, the noises of the environment around you demand your attention whether you like it or not. In clear contrast to visual stimulus - which has grown increasingly abundant in today's era of social media consumerism - you cannot close your ears to something you don't want to hear. As McLuhan puts it, "We simply are not equipped with earlids". So what does this mean? In a vacuum, the "ear world" is all-encompassing, and a naturally more intrusive environment than that of the other senses.

At our most primal core, it was once the most desirable. As a species, humans have evolved to be fiercely sociable creatures in order to survive, and we would find peace in bonding via shared conversation, music and chorus. For thousands of years, sound was what brought people closer during times of leisure. Keep your vision sharp during work, while hunting, gathering or avoiding predators, then relax and allow the sounds of your environment engulf you in rest. That is what we have grown as a species to appreciate, and that symmetry is what can make us feel whole. But in the modern era of televisions, billboards, and cell phones, the visual stimuli never ceases. We have enclosed ourselves in a box, one that is completely catered to us and us alone. We choose what channels we will watch, what accounts we follow, what messages we will receive. In doing so, we've created a perfectly personalized echo chamber of entertainment. While our natural instinct drives us towards the meritocracy of sound, we instead opt for what is more comfortable. In leisure, we now see only what we want to see, and any deviation from that norm incites an angry comment or an unfollow in an effort to keep our environment exclusive to our exact preferences. Perhaps only time will tell what this deviance from our instinctual behavior will breed. McLuhan published this work in 1967, but his tone and introspective look at our society seems to be straight out of a dystopian gen Z hit piece. And yet here we are, more than 50 years later, and while modern culture still elicits the same "end is neigh" projections for the future, whether or not right now is truly the dystopia generations before us have claimed is completely subjective. But the message McLuhan was intending for may not be the doomsday analysis that millenials and gen Z alike have grown so accustomed to from our elders.

At his core, McLuhan was an observer. His findings from what was modern media were written absent from any prejudice or bias. McLuhan simply gave an outsiders analysis on human nature and how it blends with the media we consume. A trend towards personalized visual stimuli and away from the communal auditory environment is not inherently a bad thing for the individual or the society, and McLuhan didn't explicitly portray it as such. Picture this: each and every one of us has a world without borders at their fingertips - a completely customized environment where seemingly infinite outlets of news, entertainment and conversation are competing for our attention, and only the most inspiring can earn it. Our time has never been more valuable, even while we're "wasting it" by browsing online. But then again, this process of weeding out what isn't worthy of the right to our time is done absent . Rarely do we give a second glance at what doesn't conform to our predisposed set of beliefs of everything from politics to what we generally find funny. Entertainment embodies the spirit of capitalism as well as anything, so if you aren't actively consuming some type of media - whether it's by following accounts, liking pictures, or sharing content with friends - there is ample incentive for that part of culture to be erased from your feed.

For better or for worse, you are missing out on that subsection of our societal ecosystem. Is this healthy? On one hand, words can and often do have real, negative physical effects on people. There are times when you as a person would be better off not having heard something. But living in a bubble stagnates your growth and development. It shelters you from the real world around you. You have no choice - this world isn't always pretty, but you have been born into it and you deserve to have as much knowledge of the people you share it with and the circumstances you face. Generations before us have succeeded with inescapable face-to-face interaction during both work and play, and as a result been given a better opportunity to grow into healthy, wholesome individuals. Knowledge is power, and when one isn't conformed to a predisposed echo-chamber of ideas and instead strive to understand their environment, they can maximize that potential.

The ear favors no particular point of view. You cannot close your eyes to someone's message when they are standing in front of you. Naturally, that is the way things have always been - you have the right to interpret your environment the way you see fit, but you must react to it rather than it molding itself for you. As we experience a new frontier of hyper personalized content in the era of social media, a lot of that harsh facet of reality is lost. We scroll through feeds of accounts we chose, we watch channels we trust, and we send texts and phone calls to the people we like. We have shaped our environment to be perfectly comfortable and non-confrontational, but in doing so we have lost the essence of a true community, one that forces the individual to adapt and constantly re-evaluate their own beliefs, and in the end, become a more complete person.