MEDIA ECOLOGY. Exploring the metaphor.

Carlos A. Scolari - Universitat Pompeu Fabra

carlos.scolari@gmail.com

www.digitalismo.com - www.hipermediaciones.com - www.modernclicks.net

1960

1968N. Postman

National Council ofTeachers of English

Conference

1971Media Ecology

program at NY University

“Medium Theory”Meyrowitz , J. 1985 No sense of place: the impact of electronic media on social behavior

Media Ecology

2000MEA

InauguralConvention

1970 1990 2000

1960sMcLuhan introduces

the concept in private

communications

1980

‘Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past,

as it will modify the future’ (1964: 199).

Jorge Luis BorgesKafka and His Precursors

L. MumfordJ. Ellull

E. Havelock

J. Goody

H. Innis

W. Ong

M. McLuhanN. Postman

Metaphor

Metaphor and theory

‘Metaphors matter’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980).

Metaphors are basic for scientific discourse and theoretical modelling

Boom of the ecological metaphor Cultural ecology (1955)

Biosemiotics (1962)

Biolinguistic (1967)

Ecological anthropology (1968)

Media Ecology (1968)

Political ecology (1972)

Sociobiology (1975)

Human behavioral ecology (1975)

Industrial ecology (1989)

Spatial ecology (1989)

Ecolinguistics (1990)

Communicative ecology (1995)

Historical ecology (1998)

Information ecologies (1999)

Howard and Eugene Odum (1953) Fundamentals of Ecology

Interpretations of metaphor (I)

Media as environments

‘ME is the study of media as environments’ (Postman, 1970).

‘ME looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception,

understanding, feeling, and value (Postman, 1970).

‘Media are extensions’ (McLuhan, 1964).

‘Technology alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any

resistance’ (McLuhan, 1964).

This is the environmental dimension of Media Ecology:

media create an ‘environment’ that surrounds the individuals

and models their perception and cognition.

Interpretations of metaphor (II)

Intermedia relations

‘The steadying influence of the book as a product of sustain intellectual effort was

destroyed by new developments in periodicals and newspapers’ (Innis, 1951).

‘The potential of the telegraph to transform information into a commodity might

never have been realized, except for the partnership between the telegraph and the

press’ (Postman, 1985).

‘No medium has its meaning or existence alone, but only in constant interplay with

other media” (McLuhan, 1964).

This is the intermedia dimension of Media Ecology:

media are like ‘species’ that live in the same ecosystem

and establish relationships between them.

Exploring a scientific metaphor means analyzing the semantic universe of the analogy, translating the basic assumptions from one field to another to check the strength of the metaphor and identify new questions and challenges for media studies. I will limit my reflection to a short list of concepts:

Evolution

Interface

Hybridization

Evolution

Origins

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859)

Dictionary

Mutation, natural selection, competence, extinction,

bifurcation, micro-evolution, macro-evolution.

Key-ideas

Ecology thinks in space while evolution thinks in time.

Evolution - Diachronic(Temporal axis)

Ecology - Synchronic(Spatial axis)

Evolution

Expansion of the metaphor

Evolution has been immediately applied to Social

Sciences (Marx --> 1867 Das Kapital)

Evolution of technology: Simon, 1969; Basalla, 1988;

Kelly, 1992; Diamond, 1999; Saviotti, 2006; Ziman, 2000;

Frenken, 2006; Arthur, 2009.

Evolution of communication: speech, body-language,

fiction and music (Mellor, 1990); art (Dutton, 2009);

narrative (Boyd, 2009); literary genres (Moretti, 2005).

‘It is time to look at the arts in the light of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution […] Recent years have seen immensely productive applications of Darwinian ideas in anthropology, economics, social psychology, linguistics, history, politics, legal theory, and criminology, as well as the philosophical

study of rationally, theology and value theory […]’

Denis Dutton (2009)The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution

‘Evocriticism (evolutionary-criticism) lets us link literature with the whole of life, with other human activities and

capacities, and their relation to those of other animals, as they compete, cooperate, and play, as they observe,

understand, and empathize with other. It can reconnect literature with the whole range of human experience […]’

Boyd, B. (2009) On the Origin of Stories. Evolution, cognition, and fiction

Extinction

Questions

Can media become extinct?

Are we assisting to the extinction of mass media

and broadcasting?

The history of media is full of technological fossils

(from papyrus to telegraph).

But do media really become extinct? Do they,

as McLuhan postulated, survive in the content

of the ‘new’ media?

Carlon, C. / Scolari, C. (2009) El Fin de los Medios Masivos.

El comienzo de un debate

Big Bang

New media species

Explosion

Punctuated equilibrium (Eldredge and Gould, 1972)

Rapid events of branching speciation

Applied by:

- Franco Moretti (2005) -> literary genres (1740-1900)

- Bob Logan (2007) -> explosion of languages

Questions

Are we assisting to an explosion of ‘new’ media

and communication practices?

Can we re-write the history of media from this

perspective?

Interfaces

Interface: a key-concept?

Like system in the 1950s, structure in the 1960s,

or text in the 1980s, interface may be the key concept

of the new generation of social scientists.

Human-machine interface

Technology-technology interface

Key-idea

Every media has an interface (human-technology

interface) and, at the same time, every media

is an interface (technology-technology interface).

Interfaces

Media interfaces

The interface is the place where the evolution of

the media is negotiated -> human-media coevolution

The interface is also the place where media interact

between them -> intermedia coevolution

Key-ideas

The interface is the ‘environment’ that media

ecologists

have been analyzing for the last 50 years.

The study of the interfaces could be considered

the micro-level of Media Ecology analysis,

the minimal unit of analysis (like the sign for Linguistics

or the gene for Genetics)

Coevolution

Concept

Coevolution is also a key concept for Media Ecology.

Questions

Human-media coevolution

How do consumers (readers, viewers, users) coevolve

with their media?

How do media coevolve with their consumers?

Intermedia coevolution

How do two or more media coevolve together

(cinema/TV, web/newspapers, etc.)?

Hybridizations / Remediations

Intermedia coevolution

Hybridizations / Remediations

Scolari, C. (2008) Hipermediaciones.

Elementos para unaTeoría de la Comunicación

Digital Interactiva

Conclusions

In a few words…

To expand the ecological metaphor…

… mans to increase the dictionary and explore new research lines:

Media evolution

Interface

Human-media coevolution

Intermedia coevolution / Hybridizations

Email: carlos.scolari@gmail.com

Facebook: carlos.scolari

Twitter: cscolari

Blog I: www.digitalismo.com

Blog II: www.hipermediaciones.com

Website: www.modernclicks.net

Thanks!

Gracias!

Carlos A. Scolari

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Barcelona