I started reading Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) by Marshall McLuhan today. It has an eerie prescience.

I learned that it is the origin of the popular phrase "the medium is the message" - which is somewhat old at this point, but the more recent meme phrase "human beings are the sex organs of the machine world" is also from this book!

@fdrake
Any idea of the origin of "the medium is the massage"?

the medium is the massage — kazan

Yes. It's from the popular work Loving Hands Are Everywhere: Deferred Touch and the Public Eye, it makes a case that human sensory faculties are dispersed through space and technology through interfaces - phones, computers, doors - and so the principal metaphor for perception and comportment should be tactile rather than visual.

The phrase "the medium is the massage" is the title of the second chapter in that book, a discussion which draws heavily from the notion that touch subjectivises everyone involved an a mingling of sensations. The medium, being our social spaces, are absolutely saturated by signs and thresholds - places we need to get access to. Doors for work, our apartment complex etc. And it makes the point that the distribution of this touch based subjectivising - who counts as a subject and when - is determined by who has the social power to determine access through these interfaces.

Principally, however, that social power is diffuse like an institution's is. Not determined by particular individuals in it. And a massage is conceived of as having an active agent (the masseuse) and a passive agent (the customer). The quote "the medium is the massage" thus connotes the concentration of this subjectivising power along the lines of social power by using the direction of agency in massage, and also that a massage is a medium of touch.

Edit: (I made this up)

The Farewell Waltz by Milan Kundera.

A pure feature of Kundera is his unique ambiguity and unbearable feeling of... everything.

@fdrake,
The above popular work must have been coterminous with M McLuhan's popularity because the term (.... the massage) was around in the mid 60's and associated with McLuhan.... from personal memories. And was interpreted then as the massively increasing power-to-influence media would have in "massaging" ideas i.e. popular opinion, in a particular 3rd party desired direction. Thereby,forecasting examples of what we now see as social media influencers by its (media's) increasing pervasive presence in the day to day.
Unfortunately, evidence of this is only anecdotal/a schoolchild's sometimes scratchy memory..

self depreciating smile

@fdrake,
Sorry, not intending to disagree with or question your erudition. Just sharing a personal memory. Or maybe a brain skip that is now a personal memory.

smile

Oh no worries I made all that shit up.

I was fooled.

Ah, sorry. I edited the post to say it's made up. Turns out all post phenomenological social research dreck seems equally plausible eh.

It was a stellar performance so I'll brook no apologies.