"The Medium is the Massage"

The first part of the text make a point that shows the type of media we interact with changes how we involve ourselves with the world. It states that electric media, such as the television or radio, causes our society to act more as a whole than does written or print media. Print media, as the book states, encourages a sort of seclusion among those who use it.
Seeing as this book is from a time before the internet and cell phones, it surprises me how accurate this statement is. Even from a time when electronic media was in its youth, the author was able to see where the world was heading: a smaller, more connected society.

The next section I read talked about jobs, and how they are being threatened by the technology around us. McLuhan's statement, "'When this circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?'" shows that we are expendable in the business world. Computers and machinery may some day be a better choice for our jobs than we are.
It is very strange that the author would include this section in his book. The rest of the work seems to illustrate that our world changes due to the medium in which we confront it, but this section says nothing about that. It does say that our lives could change due to technology, but not in the way stated previously. The only reasoning I can see for this section is that the author wanted to give an example of how technology changes us.

The book later goes on to explain how our media evolved, from times before language, to the creation of spoken word, to the act of writing our speech. With this, the author states how our means of acquiring the truth changed from hearing speech to seeing words. Writing completely changed our world. Things that were written down became solid and concrete. Written word gave us a more modern society, filled with things such as roads, buildings, and government. By writing down thoughts, people were able to reach a larger market, giving more people similar ideas. Written ideas could be copied exactly, not changed through speech. Speech alone can be misinterpreted and spoken differently from one person to the next. Text does not change.
This section of the book seems to differ in ideals from the initial section. This section states that written word brought people closer and more connected. The initial section of the book states that written word brings seclusion and fragmented societies, while electronic media brings the world closer and more connected. If this was the authors intended argument, I do not see why he would state the opposite.