"The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology"
About this Quote
His phrasing is deliberately clinical - “personal and social consequences” - but the subtext is almost mischievous. He’s warning that we keep treating technology as neutral plumbing, when it’s closer to an operating system for daily life. Call a medium an “extension of ourselves” and you get the seduction and the cost in one move: it feels empowering because it amplifies human capacity (speed, reach, memory), yet it quietly reshapes what counts as normal. A car extends the foot, then redesigns cities around driving; a smartphone extends attention, then reorganizes friendship, work, and boredom around constant availability.
The key word is “scale.” McLuhan isn’t saying new tech adds a new tool; it introduces a new magnitude - of speed, visibility, simultaneity, surveillance, dependency. That scale difference produces downstream consequences that no single “message” can explain. Written in the age of mass broadcast and accelerating consumer electronics, the line reads now like preemptive commentary on the internet: the headline isn’t what’s trending. The headline is that trending exists as a social force at all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|---|
| Source | Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964 — opening chapter "The Medium Is the Message". |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
McLuhan, Marshall. (2026, January 17). The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-medium-is-the-message-this-is-merely-to-say-36756/
Chicago Style
McLuhan, Marshall. "The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-medium-is-the-message-this-is-merely-to-say-36756/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-medium-is-the-message-this-is-merely-to-say-36756/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.
