system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What does Marshall McLuhan mean by "the medium is the message"? Is this idea useful in current times?
gpt
It is useful, but you need to be willing to extend credit to McLuhan and do some heavy lifting on the exegetical side, mainly since he isn't around to do any of that work himself.

The phrase "the medium is the message" means essentially that a given form of media communicates/transmits something to you irrespective of its content. That is to say, the characteristics of the medium itself carries a cognitive payload. Whether a medium is slow or fast, whether it contains pictures or text or sound, whether it is high or low resolution, whether it is interactive and to what degree, whether it is a private or shared experience, whether it is information dense, and so on. All of these questions can be asked of a given medium without even beginning to consider questions of "content". McLuhan suggests that these characteristics are, in fact, more important than so-called "content" with respect to the effect it has on us and our behavior.