The Significance of the Nature and Context of a Medium

Early in the piece, McLuhan writes: "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." Shrinking this down, we have: "The personal and social consequences of any medium result from the new scale that is introduced by media, including new technologies." Soon after, McLuhan clears this up by discussing the idea that what is most important about a work of a particular medium is not the work itself, but the nature of the medium being used. An especially clear portion of the discussion was the point that all works of a medium contain another medium in order to form meaning, such as words containing speech. It seems to me that one of the underlying points in this piece is the idea that a medium carries with it its own significances based on its own nature and the way in which it exists in society and the world, and is not only significant through the content used to display the medium. I see this as very true, although I may be looking at it in a somewhat fundamental way. Media themselves have their own particular properties, and so the products of those media should not be looked at without considering the significance of the media themselves, since a large part of the significance comes from the nature and history of the medium, and not just from the content expressed through the medium. I'm sure that I'm missing some oh McLuhan's key ideas, so I'm eager to see what others have to say. I'll use Yamishibai, a show depicting spins of Japanese folklore, as an example of the significance of a medium. In this case, there is a media fusion. An old style of paper theater, not unlike a puppet show, is used in conjunction with drawing and animation, so that it is not just the story itself that is told, but the medium itself shows its significance by pointing out the folkloric traditions involved, which also helps to set the tone. http://www.crunchyroll.com/yamishibai-japanese-ghost-stories/episode-2-zanbai-641889