all thumbs

The medium, in ordinary use, McLuhan pointed out, refers only to the figure not the ground and hence neglects the vital environmental surround that extends beyond a mere geometric configuration (or more precisely, the graph of the communication net). This myopic approach, McLuhan notes in a letter to Edward T. Hall (August 26, 1975), is exemplified by Deutsch, Shannon, and Weaver, and in particular Weiner's use of the terms "media" and "medium":

The Shannon-Weaver model of information theory (encoder, channel and de-coder) simply ignores the law of the situation, i.e. The Shannon-Weaver model is identical to the bias of Western man which excludes the possibility of environmental influence. In fact, the environment presupposed by the activity of communication is categorized as "noise" in the Shannon- Weaver paradigm. Visual space is the only kind of space that is figure minus ground. (Edward T. Hall Collection: n.p.)

It is by attending to both figure and ground, and the interplay be- tween them, that McLuhan was able to offer a more expansive definition of media and medium. For example, radio, according to McLuhan, is merely a name for all of the electric and simultaneous services that create the instantaneous surround of information. It also allowed him to see how meaning was reconfigured in relation to intermedia dynamics or the media ecology. An example here can be found in McLuhan's consideration of the technology of writing:

In the first place, then, pre-literate societies based on a monopoly of the spoken word, are static, repetitive, unchang- ing. They are, as it is said, "time-bound." Such societies find it difficult to explore space or to extend their communications horizontally. Writing is a tremendous revolution in such a world. For writing is the translation of the vocal or audible into spatial form. Writing gives control over space. Writing produces at once the city. The power to shape space in writing brings the power to organize space architecturally. And when messages can be transported, then comes the road, and armies, and empires. The empires of Alexander and the Caesars were essentially built by paper routes. But today with instantaneous global communications the entire planet is, for purposes of inter-communication, a village rather than a vast imperial net- work. It is obvious that writing cannot have the same meaning or function for us that it had for earlier cultures. (McLuhan 1999: 161–2)