The taps of fingernails alongside the rims of clipboards. Little drums beating in a pleasant way that triggers tingles. They are obscurely rhythmic, oscilating with their sounds to create a melody that just hits you, puts you back to your seat and sinks you back as if you were on a sofa.

You’d have encountered this once if you subscribe to ASMR. It’s a common ASMR trigger.

“The Medium is the Massage”

My first reaction towards the reading was: “That must have been a typo right? It’s message, not massage?” What can be seen as a mistake, might be intentional. I’m not really sure but it does set a precedent of brain jolting and outside-of-the-box thinking. This is the activity I had been doing as I went through the reading.

Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Flore journeyed their readers through the annals of history and the innovations. “The medium, or process, of our time-electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our social life.” If you’d think about it, this is true towards all major innovations we have encountered as we read about a new chapter in the books of mankind: Symbols, Alphabets, Letters, Languages, Writings, Prints. These are methods of communication, each is a step in the progression towards the next one. With each unlocked stage, mankind was able to convey more thoughts and messages with one another, enabling us to achieve more and elevate to a higher plane of thoughts. We have progressed from sticks and stones to education, from primitive hunting to industrializations, from sailing seas to reaching for the stars. The medium, within this context meaning the form of communication, has enabled us to reshape and redefined our reality.

Let us apply that to the context of the topic of our course: Media. The medium is media, and the media truly has given us the tools and ability to redefine the reality we live in and reshape our views. We are given a platform of self-expression and connection: Artists are now easily able to publish and promote their art, an extension of their self-expressions now easily accessible. Media, this medium, is an extension of our mind and our inner desire to be understood, to be connected.