I read the photobook “The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effect” by McLuhan and Quentin Fiore in 1967. In there McLuhan considers the media as an extension of the human sense and life. At first, I thought media was just the way humans generally communicate, like radio, TV, the internet, etc. but after reading McLuhan I consider that the media is everything that the human being creates and uses to transfer and perceive the senses and human activities outside the body like his of the wheel as an extension of our feet, the clothes as an extension of our skin or the book as an extension of our eyes.

Also, the text says that the media are present in every aspect of our society and have been constantly changing and reshaping our society. McLuhan said, “It’s impossible to understand social and cultural changes without knowledge of the working of media”. One example of that is the internet that leads the subculture of the internet, like the gamers, geeks, trolls, fandoms, lurkers, memers, etc. And this whole subculture of the internet and social media will continue to change as new ideas and technologies arrive.

One thing that worried me a lot is that media is extremely influential. McLuhan said that “The wordpool of information fathered by electric media …. far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear.” And this is true, the books, videos, internet tutorials, etc helps us to increase our knowledge faster and easier compared with past years. However, as easy and fast can change our interpretation of the world, for example, fake news or radical ideas. I think that designers have a huge and important moral responsibility for what we show to the world through media.