Editing Understanding Media (section)

==Exploring theories==
[[Image:SummaryDiagramVertical.png|frame|right|[[Communication technology]]'s impact on [[Western culture]]. [[Print culture]] generates the most socially [[revolutionary]] and [[eversive]] forces, while electric media makes people more [[reactionary]].]]
McLuhan's theories about "the medium is the message" link culture and society. A recurrent topic is the contrast between [[oral culture]]s and [[print culture]].<ref name="p15"/>

Each new form of media, according to the analysis of McLuhan, shapes messages differently thereby requiring new filters to be engaged in the experience of viewing and listening to those messages.

McLuhan argues that as "sequence yields to the simultaneous, one is in the world of the structure and of configuration". The main example is the passage from mechanization (processes fragmented into sequences, lineal connections) to electric speed (faster up to simultaneity, creative configuration, structure, total field).<ref name="p13">p.13</ref>

[[Howard Rheingold]] comments upon McLuhan's "the medium is the message" in relation to the convergence of technology, specifically the computer. In his book ''Tools for Thought'' Rheingold explains the notion of the universal machine - the original conception of the computer.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.well.com/user/hlr/texts/tftindex.html | title=Tools for Thought by Howard Rheingold: Table of Contents }}</ref> Eventually computers will no longer  use information but knowledge to operate, in effect ''thinking''. If in the future computers (the medium) are everywhere, then what becomes of McLuhan's message?