After three thousand years of explosion, through fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding." With these words on the first page of Understanding Media published in 1964, Marshall McLuhan burst onto the intellectual scene with his most influential book. In 1964, Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, a seminal work in media theory that many academics agree is responsible for laying the foundation for contemporary media studies. Rather than focusing on the meaning of messages in the media, it focuses on analyzing the medium itself. McLuhan argues that the actual structures and physical limitations of media create profound psychological and social consequences. Challenging conventional understandings of media, McLuhan defines them as “an extension of ourselves” (McLuhan), meaning that in addition to obvious examples of media such as films, photographs, and radio, McLuhan also considers mediums such as numbers, clothes, cars, and others average. even electric light bulbs. Although light bulbs are not generally considered a form of media, McLuhan challenges conventional attitudes by arguing that technologies such as light bulbs, automobiles, and bicycles are examples of media because they are extensions of humans that influence how we perceive the world we live in. The light bulb acts as a form of media because as its light illuminates the dark room, it functions as a device that allows us to process the visual information around us in a way that we normally wouldn't. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The term “global village” was coined in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan. Its ubiquity, like the global technologies that realize it, has been widespread. At first glance, it seems that technology that extends humans' ability to experience and interpret the world is positive and desirable. However, McLuhan points out that the inherent tendency to focus on messages within the media blinds us to the limitations and structures imposed by the media themselves. For example, the medium of writing is limited to the expression of speech, the medium of printing is limited to the expression of writing, the medium of telegraph is limited to the expression of print. Each medium that evolves from the previous one allows fewer expressive possibilities and creates an increasingly restrictive form of communication. The Telegraph, which evolved technologically from the spoken word, profoundly limits the amount of meaning that can be communicated compared to the spoken word. With the spoken word, communication is much more expressive and meaningful thanks to nuances such as tone, verbal emphasis, accent, volume, and so on. With the telegraph the expressive possibilities of the word are reduced to a technological format that eliminates the possibilities of expression. As a result, mediums impose a format that requires conformity to technological structures that reduce our communicative possibilities, narrow meaning, and ultimately narrow the lens through which we perceive the world. A relevant example of today's digital society is social media platforms such as Twitter, which reduce the possibilities of expression to 140 characters of text or to express oneself through "re-tweeting" the posts of others. Although McLuhan did not propose his theory in our age of the Internet and social media, we can still draw important conclusions when we apply his theory to our current communication practices. He believed that what mattered most was not what we said, but how we said it. Ultimately, the words we use are not as important as how we choose to say them. There.