The Internet's Message to Us, RLST 245

McLuhan states that "The medium is the message". This statement, which was profound at the time in which he stated it, was simply a suggestion that the capacity of a form of communication influenced the form of the message it communicated. Telephones at the time were influencing the way and types of things that were communicate from person to person through a variety of factors such as privacy, speed, and being exclusively audio.

But in the 21st century, "the medium is the message" becomes a baffling statement when applied to the internet, a means of communication that is nearly ubiquitous. The internet offers services that no other medium can. It allows us to have news, interpersonal communication, games, videos, shopping, storage, jobs, even crime, and so much more. But with a form of communication that is theoretically infinite in its capacity, how can it organize itself into a meaningful way?

The answer, of course, is Google.com. Google is chiefly a search engine, and a very good one with algorithms that customize itself to cater to each individual user, and even algorithms that often take into account error on the account of the user when attempting to find what the user wants. And if that were all Google were, it could be easy to see how McLuhan was right, since all information seems to be funneled through this efficient machine.

But at our present time, Google has expanded to become a platform for social networking, blogging, video sharing, file sharing, word processing, translating, academic journal database, smart phones, and the list goes on. It's tempting to say that Google has a monopoly on the internet, if such a thing were possible, but it continually drives forward true innovation that subtly changes and improves the way that we use the internet. And therein lies the challenge to McLuhan's statement. If the medium is infinite, then what's it's message to us? What limitations can it possibly present that can't be attributed to whatever service we use to access it? Here we can only assume that McLuhan would say that Google is the medium, because it literally shapes the way we search things and feeds us the results it thinks we want.

Even though the interface with the internet is the only thing finite, Google's taking a crack at changing that too. Google Glass is pushing us closer and closer to a cybernetic interface, which would free us from the limitations of computer screens and keyboards, computer mice, and touchscreens.

Perhaps the only message that the internet as a medium can tell us, besides that of infinity, is one of fragility. The most chilling example of this is in the video game Left 4 Dead. You play as a group of survivors during a zombie apocalypse. On the walls of safe-houses throughout the game, you find graffiti scrawled on the walls by other survivors, not unlike a news feed on Facebook. But on one of the walls, there is what I consider to be the most profound statement of all, one which struck me deeply and with a discomfort that that has stuck with me ever since.

The internet is a medium is powered by computers, but it's maintained by people and relies on those people to create and organize the content. We often think of the internet as an autonomous entity, something that is all knowing, all powerful, and not entirely filled with porn, but the truth is that the internet is people, and if society as we know it were ever to collapse, the internet would go with it.