“The message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.”

-Marshall McLuhan

I had to study that kind of stuff in college. What it basically states is that any medium, be it radio, television or the Internet is going to be limited by what it can offer.

So what about the picture on the right hand side of the screen? It looks like something an adult would draw to illustrate a child’s drawing of crazy person whipping out a gun in a classroom.

My wife asked me if I had seen the picture a couple of weeks ago. She showed it to me and I learned our five-year-old son had drawn it after attending a counseling class at his school on violence.

He is five, very smart and one heck of an artist, I think. Though I knew, I asked him about the picture and what it was supposed to be about.

“You see? She’s got a gun and she’s got crazy eyes and the teacher is writing on the board and she’s not paying attention to her and she’s mad,” he said as he pointed back and forth between the two people he drew.

I asked him if he saw a picture of something like what he drew before. “No,” he said honestly. “I drew it all by myself.”

My son watches up to three hours of TV a week. That is it. I do not allow him more for a good reason.

A few years before I took her class, one of my favorite professors, Dr. Susan Thompson co-authored the book, Fundamental Effects of Media. In that class—which I earned an A in—we learned how media influences people.

There’s cool media like television and the radio, which washes over you like the breeze from an air conditioner. It’s easy to enjoy and you might tell other people about it if you like it.

Then there is hot media like the printed word and art. They scald you like a hot potato and you might even toss that hot potato of information you get from it to someone else. If you get “burned,” so to speak, you’re most definitely going to tell someone about it.

I got burned by my son’s picture. Mainly because I didn’t agree with the topic being taught to such a young audience. In his case, a kindergarten class.

Television and other media have done a lot for our society. Not much of it is good and that is why I limit my son’s TV viewing.

Increased violence, the decline of any sort of intellectual thought in our country and the obsession with joining in on something—whether it be voting on American Idol or marching in a Tea Party rally—are the effects of mass media on our society.

It is my belief that most of the things people say around the water cooler are not their own thoughts to begin with. Those thoughts are drilled in each day by pundits and entertainers and while the effect may be enlightening for the moment, it reduces people’s ability to think for themselves.

The same applies for what is taught in schools. Most kids are sponges and absorb their surroundings and what is told to them.

I fear we are headed towards a society where by not reading and thinking for ourselves, we will be dictated what happens by the gatekeepers of the mass media and politicians with agendas not suited to the American Dream.

To quote Mr. McLuhan, “The future of the book is the blurb.”

I really hope he is wrong. But the more I look around, I see that he might be right after all.

If you agree, pass this information on.