Medium
Related: information - media - mass media - recording - storage - transmission
Definition
A medium (plural media - it is directly a Latin word meaning "the one in the middle") is a carrier of something -- in the most popular sense, of information, mostly human ideas. Depending on the actual characteristics of the medium, it provides transmission or storage of information or both.
For example:
- Speech, gestures, telephone.
- Stone scores, audio and video recordings, hard disks
- Paper, letter mail
- Mass media: recitations, newspaper, magazine, movies, broadcast media (television, radio, streaming media), Compact discs, DVDs
- Interactive media: computer games, online games, video games, edutainment, interactive television
- The Internet is a mix of mass media and personal media
- In art, a medium means the material in which an artist works: paint, wood, marble, steel, etc.
- In biology and chemistry, a solvent serves as a medium for molecules.
- By metonymy, the industries which produce news and entertainment content for the mass media are often called "the media" (in much the same way the newspaper industry is called "the press"). In the late 20th century it became commonplace for this usage to be construed as singular ("The media is...") rather than the traditional plural.
Marshall McLuhan was famous for saying (among other things), "The medium is the message." --http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium
Media [...]