In The Medium is the Message, philosopher of communication Marshall McLuhan argues that the content of communication is actually less important than the form through which it is communicated.

By choosing to focus on the medium, McLuhan is able to separate its impact from that of the content. He illustrates this through several examples, including electric light. Light, he says, is a medium used by humans in innumerable ways: Whether it’s brain surgery or baseball, the content could not exist without electric light and that the type of light “controls the scale and form of human association and action.”

Although I agree that humans interact with certain mediums and that medium can impact the reception and even the interpretation of a message, McLuhan’s whole theory feels very ~ theoretical. His arguments appear to be logically sound, but the examples he discusses in this chapter are hard to contextualize. The best scenario that I can think of is that when you want someone to do something, as opposed to screaming, you ask them nicely; because the medium through which you communicate your message is bound to influence the way that its content is perceived.