the medium is...

I am betting you can finish that phrase, especially with the TV as a hint.

I think the first time I ever heard of Marshall McLuhan was in the Woody Allen movie, "Annie Hall," in 1977, when I was in college. Probably I had heard the phrase, "The medium is the message," but it was the movie that cemented McLuhan in my memory.

Fast forward to 17 August 2025.

I am reading an article in the New York Times magazine, "I Never Understood Our Data-Saturated Life Until a Hurricane Shut It Down." The author mentions McLuhan, and it piqued my interest.

Remembering that film moment in 1977, I got curious about McLuhan, so I used the medium of the internet to look him up. I searched for articles, books, and videos. Then, "The Medium is the Massage" appeared as the title of a YouTube video. "Massage"??? Surely that's a typo? No. Absolutely not a typo. It is the actual title of an experimental 1967 documentary that features McLuhan. It's about 50 minutes long and so worth watching. It's worth watching for McLuhan himself, of course, but also for the film-making, which makes the talking head a thing of arresting imagery. And, like much of McLuhan's work, the film feels prescient.

The global village is a world in which you don’t necessarily have harmony; you have extreme concern with everybody else’s business. And much involvement in everybody else’s life. It’s a sort of Ann Landers column written larger. And it doesn’t necessarily mean harmony and peace and quiet, but it does mean huge involvement in everybody else’s affairs.

McLuhan probed, investigated, asked questions and poked at ideas. One question leads to another.

The medium I employ is that of the probe, not the package. That is, I tend to use phrases, I tend to use observations, that tease people, that squeeze them, that push at them, that disturb them. Because I’m really exploring situations. I’m not trying to deliver some complete set of observations about anything.

[NOTE: I wrote this unfinished post a month ago. Today, I read a preview of Diana Pasulka's upcoming book, The Arrival of the Supraterrestrial. One of the people she focuses on is McLuhan. So, I thought it was a retrocausal sign that it was time to publish this, even though it's incomplete. Because, you know, engagement with media is a trigger for premonitions. Or maybe you don't know? So here is a three-way intersection: McLuhan, Pasulka, and Wargo that involves time, media, and what-is-a-human. You can explore this intersection for yourself, if it speaks to you. Consider this unfinished post a teaser.]