"The Medium is the Message"
In Ovid's tale of old, Narcissus, a handsome and promising youth, falls in love with his own reflection in the waters of a pool. Unable to tear himself from the constraints and objects of his passion, he wastes away to nothing. Caravaggio's rendering here fittingly situates him in darkness and a locked-in circle with himself. The tragic implications are evident.
While allusions to Narcissus abound in literature and culture, it is McCluhan's thrice-featured reference that intrigues today.
Exhibit A: An anecdote demonstrating the very viewpoint of media and technology that McCluhan wishes to challenge. General David Sarnoff's statement whilst accepting his honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame that technology is too often a "'scapegoat for the sins of those who wield them'" prompts McCluhan's rebuttal: "There is simply nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium, of any and all media, in the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of his own being in a new technical form" (3-4). In other words, Sarnoff ignores the unique entity technology has in itself, assuming it merely channels the user/viewer.
He argues that medium is message especially with digital media where the simultaneous trumps the sequence, citing Cubism as an example, an art movement that requires "instant total awareness" (5). Though written in the 1960s, he makes an emphatic case for recognizing the thing itself as a message apart from the content. To ignore the thing is to do as Narcissus does-- become enthralled with the content at the expense of a greater, fuller awareness.
It strikes me as a particularly fitting allusion for us today as technology-users, especially as I look again at Caravaggio's Narcissus. How different is he from us today and our smart phones? To what extent are we hypnotized by the screens before us, lured into a reality there that clouds our awareness of unique message in the device itself?