media ecology

Although you might think that Marshall McLuhan was a communication studies professor, he was an English professor at the University of Toronto. You probably know him best for his pronouncement that "The medium is the message," which suggests that the channel is more influential than the content it carries. McLuhan argued that media environments are invisible to communicators because these environments are so ordinary to us. According to McLuhan, accounting for the complexity of the media environment means considering both incremental and sudden changes.

McLuhan proposed that changes in media technology determine the course of human history. The figure on page 315 is helpful in understanding how McLuhan viewed the media map of history—the four ages he identified (tribal, literate, print, and electronic) and the technological development and the dominant sense receptor associated with each age. For example, the dominant sense receptor associated with the literate age was the eye and those associated with the electronic age are the ear and hand. As another example, the invention of the phonetic alphabet was the catalyst for the literate age and also led to a linear approach to thinking.

McLuhan described people of the tribal age as having more passion and spontaneity than we have today. The literate age was when human beings developed a civilized private detachment from each other. Although the printing press brought with it the ability to widely distribute written materials, McLuhan argued it also led to a sense of separation and aloneness for people of that era. More recent scholars have suggested we’re now in the digital age, the next epoch in human history.

Neil Postman, founder of NYU’s media ecology program, continued McLuhan’s work, although not always in the same trajectory. For example, Postman argues that any new technology always presents a Faustian bargain and the primary task of media ecology is to make moral judgments.

~ Professor Cyborg