 humans, we often fall into the trap of thinking that any person or a situation or event is really made up of just one thing, right? That there's only one thing involved, or we may broaden that and fall into the trap of the fallacy of either or, right? That it's either got to be this or that, that there's no way it could be both, and it's always got to be, you know, either one thing or these two things, but the truth is human nature and human relationships are much more complex than that. We are all connected to one another and everything that one person does will impact and influence those around them and those in their sphere of influence, and the same thing is true of our relationship with technology and the way that we use technology in our lives. We impact it, it obviously impacts us and and drives us, so bring all this up because this is really the premise of an important communication theory and philosophy known as media ecology, media ecology, and that's what we're going to take a look at in this video is the definition of media ecology, what is it, why is it important, how does it impact our lives, and why is understanding it valuable to us as communicators in the modern age. So media ecology really starts way back with a guy named Marshall McLuhan, who developed, this is a communication theorist, developed this idea called technological determinism. Marshall McLuhan in the mid 20th century came up with this idea of technological determinism and his idea said that a society's technology determines its cultural values, its social structure, and its history. In other words, that social progress in a society is driven by technological innovation, that it's that intertwined, right, that the type and speed with which technology develops will impact the development of that society, the way that people interact with one another in general. He said, we need to examine the effect of technology on the nature of human relationships, so what's the what's the connection between the development of this technology over history and in our current times with the way that we relate to one another as humans, the way that we interact, the way that we communicate and the way that we essentially deal with one another on a day to day basis. So in technological determinism, there are a couple of different ages, periods that McLuhan identified. The first is what we call the tribal age. So we're thinking back to the earliest civilizations, right? This is before the written word even existed. And McLuhan said, well, in the tribal age, you were so dependent on those around you, your tribe in this limited geographic area where the people who spoke the same language as you had the same values as you and were responsible for your safety. And they recognized that the safety and ability to thrive for everyone in that tribe depended on all the others. So to get along was paramount to be able to get along with your neighbors and to provide for everybody and look out for everybody. Also, that language was entirely verbal. It was entirely spoken. We didn't have the written word at that time. So if you ventured too far away from your tribe, you were going to be totally disconnected from your history and from present events and things because you were going to be in an area where you didn't speak the language. You had no connection, no way of really accurately transmitting messages across extensive distances. So the tribal age, everything was really centered around that tribe and had a huge impact on culture and certainly had a huge impact on communication because everything was part of the spoken word then, right? Eventually, you know, the need to send messages across greater distances and things led us into what is called the literacy age, what McLuhan called the literacy age, where you had the first development of the written word, so to speak, or written, you know, even symbols that represented these ideas. And so you could carve them in. And if two people have the same understanding of what that symbol meant, then you could communicate that then across great distances. And that allowed people to branch out a little bit and to to get away from their tribe, so to speak, a little bit. You could still be connected to your tribe and still receive the news of your tribe. It also allowed people to to pass history down in a more permanent way and more cohesive way than just a spoken word. I mean, if you've ever played a game of telephone, you know, how quickly when it's just spoken, how that can break down very quickly, right? So the literacy age ushered that in and also really started to divide people in terms of culture, in a sense that, for example, if you take the Bible, only only the richest people and only the those who are rich and those who were really educated in religion, so priests and things were able to read. Reading was not something that most people could do. It was a very limited amount of people that could do that, that were literate. So during the literacy age, those people really were in a sense of or were in a place of power because they could read. First of all, it takes forever to write a Bible. If you can imagine how long a Bible is, that had to be handwritten. So everyone had to be handwritten. It became such a valuable property, not only because there weren't very many of them, but because then you could learn to read. It's hard to learn to read if you don't have anything to read, right? So during the literacy age, you had these people that were able to kind of branch out and get away. And we had this transmission of history in a different way, but still very limited in that sense, right? There weren't that many people who could read and write, and so I'm somewhat limited. Now, one of the biggest changes in human history came about in what McLuhan called the print age, because we had the invention of the printing press that you see here, right? The printing press, Gutenberg's printing press was invented, allowed for the mass production of books and publications and newspapers and things. And so because those materials were available, more people learned how to read, more people had access to those materials, more people were able to learn how to read, more people were able to discover things on their own, find out information on their own, and not just depend on the information that someone else shared with them and the accuracy of that information, they could actually go to a book or find it themselves or discover these ideas on their own. So it really opened up a world of possibility for people, not in the least of which is that you could be separated from your clan, so to speak, from your tribe from a great distance and still have a permanent record of what happened there in history and still be able to connect with them because then they could write and you could read probably by then. So it allowed people to kind of spread out even more and venture out on their own. So you start to see the real exploration, for example, in the United States. At the time of the United States, when we saw pioneers, because they could be independent, they could go out on their own. Another example of a massive transition that happened as a result of the print age is the Protestant Revolution when Martin Luther nailed those items to the wall of the church and his list of complaints or demands or issues, whatever you would call them, and that happened as a result of people being able to read. They no longer were reliant on the priests to pass along information to them about their religion, about their faith, about before this time, nobody could read, they couldn't read. So all they had was the word of the priests and whatever they shared with them. Now they could do it on their own. They weren't quite as dependent and that led to a real initially a time of innovation of thought, I guess, in individuals who decided that maybe they didn't agree with everything the church was telling them and they wanted to take their faith into their own hands. And so you start to see this individualization of faith as well. So as a result of the printing press, again, more people could read, more people could write, more people to access to things like the Bible because they could be mass printed then and you weren't just dependent on somebody sitting in a dark room for ages, writing one out. So anyway, the print age really ushers in this ability to to be physically separate from your your tribe or your, you know, the place where you would call home, but still be connected, still have access to knowledge. And you see this tremendous expansion of knowledge during this time because again, people could read and take in information on their own. So the print age is really significant in the development of human history. I get affected by technology though. You have the invention of this one piece of technology that really entirely changes the world. And so again, that that relationship between the development of technology and the way society develops, then we move into the electronic age. You know, we fast forward a couple hundred years. We have the, you know, you could include telegram and things like that in here. But the major focus is traditionally on radio and television as the electronic age. So then you have even more of the ability to isolate, right? Now we can get the news. We can get entertainment and things through these electronic means. We don't ever have to see anybody to do that, right? We can just get it in our home so we can still be somewhat connected to a society and yet be completely isolated in that sense. So I can technology influencing the way that we interact with one another and the amount of time that we spend with one another and the way information is shared and the gatekeeping function and all these things that are wrapped up in the electronic age advancing that. Now, this is where McLuhan would have stopped. I mean, because this is, you know, what he saw during his lifetime. But since then, we've added sort of a new media age and I've got an asterisk next to it, as you can see, because this isn't one of McLuhan's original, but it's a natural extension of what he was talking about. This new media age with computers and cell phones and the technology that we have in that regard with social media and different things really has advanced even beyond, you know, because now you have user created content significantly on social media and on just new media devices. So you have you're not as reliant on the gatekeepers or the traditional gatekeepers of the news networks and things. You also have this expansion of things like streaming where you're seeing so much more content available from so many more areas to say nothing of the advancement in things like texting and just using messaging via social media, which again, allows us to feel like we're having a coming together like the world is shrinking because of this and it is in some ways and in other ways, it's creating even more isolation, right? Think about during the recent pandemic, many people were ordering groceries. I mean, never leaving the house. We were able to get our groceries without leaving and interacting with people. Really, we were able to to get, you know, anything that we needed by just ordering through Amazon or Walmart or whatever. And so it allows us to sort of feel like we're connected to other people by seeing what they had for breakfast and seeing all these things about them. But in truth, there's in a lot of ways, it's become even more isolating, right? So if we look at this a little bit differently, just a slightly different image, we can see, you know, the tribal age, again, as a society, we were really close together because the technology didn't exist to allow us to really move out very far from that. But then as technology has advanced and we've innovated and grown technology, it allows us to, you know, be more and more away from the tribe. It still feel connected and still be connected in some ways. And yet look at the differences had on our interpersonal skills, for example. And the way that we connect with one another, the way that we talk to one another and all those types of things. So anyway, really interesting, fascinating in my mind, one of my favorite theories of communication, technological determinism. Another idea that McLuhan heralded a lot was, or talked about a lot was this idea that the medium is the message. And so you can see here what he said about it. The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium that is of any extension of ourselves result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves or by any new technology. So he would say that, first of all, the medium is the message in indicating that that that there are there are consequences. They're both good and bad consequences that happen when we introduce a new technology, right? There's also something to be said for the idea that the medium is the message in the sense that that that the way we choose to communicate is is significant and says something about that communication. If you are going to ask someone out or break up with them, is there a more appropriate way to do that than some others? You know, some people would say, well, yeah, you know, people of my generation and above would say, well, you don't do that via text or maybe not even the via the phone. You do that in person face to face, right? But newer, younger generations would say, well, texting is a very normal way to communicate. So why wouldn't you do that via text? But my generation would say, well, that sounds a very specific impersonal message when you text someone something personal like that. It's a very impersonal way to communicate. It indicates a lack of respect or or caring for that person. But, you know, again, generationally, that's different. But but but there's a difference in the way that we communicate and how we choose to communicate. So the channel he's saying is significant. The channel that we choose to communicate says something about how we feel about that message, how we feel about that person. And then so all of that has consequences, the development of this technology in our in our society in the way that we relate to one another. OK, so Marshall McLuhan really is the kind of Godfather of this whole discussion. But in some ways, technology, technological determinism, as much as I love it, is somewhat limiting and doesn't necessarily bring the entire process into focus. There's another gentleman named Neil Postman, who came up this, you know, kind of advancement in this way of thinking called media ecology, which is what we're really going to focus on then. And it's developed out of this idea of technological determinism. But but Postman said that the media ecology really is as a holistic systems based examination of symbiotic relationship between humans, technology and the environment. The environment, meaning the context, the culture in which we live and all of those factors, right? So he said it's not just, you know, one thing and then the other and one back and forth. He said it's really this connection that all of it is connection. It's that, you know, traditional throw a stone in a calm pond and watch the ripples come out that everything within this is connected to something else and everything affects everything else. And you throw it all on a blender and see what happens. So his goal is to increase awareness of the mutual effects, the effects that technology have on humans and back and vice versa. The impact that humans have on technology then, right? His is his idea is that this is a dynamic process rather than technology is the single driving force. So in technological determinism, it's technology pushing all this and really, really driving all of this and humans just kind of following along. But Postman said, no, this is really more of a, it's a connection. It's a back and forth. It's sort of like we think about in Africa with the ecosystem there, right? That the way that all of these things connect with one another, if you take away the water, the water dries up, that affects the animals that live there, right? And the crops that grow and things, which of course affects the humans that are around there as well. It affects the land and those things move and then the ecology changes, right? But all of this is symbiotic. And Postman said that our relationship with technology and the way it impacts us is much the same, right? So if we think back to technological determinism again, we know that we have this idea of this continual cycle. Technology evolves and humans adapt. Technology evolves and humans adapt, repeat, right? It just goes all the way through those different types of things. But Postman said the media ecology cycle is somewhat different, right? You have this, in terms of human interaction, we have these new tools that are developed, new technologies that come about, new ways to communicate, and you have then the adoption or not of these technologies. So some technologies are adopted and some go by the wayside. For example, I'm old enough to remember when my space was a thing, right? And if you're not, then you can look it up, but my space sort of was a predecessor to Facebook. But Facebook became much more used because it was more dynamic and for a variety of reasons, and my space is no longer a thing. It's kind of a joke. It's kind of a trivia answer to a trivia question, right? So some of these technologies are adopted, but not all of them. Some of them go by the wayside. So when we choose to adopt a new technology then, eventually that becomes normalized. Again, I'm old enough to remember when Facebook was brand new and wasn't normal. But then, you know, so I've seen the progression through, hey, this is a new thing. I've never heard of this before and it's very unused, but it's becoming more popular. And then I've gotten to the point where, okay, now my mother who's in her 80s is on Facebook and has been for quite a while now. So it's become normalized to the point where it seems like everybody has a Facebook account, which is why then we use it for mediated communication in many ways. It has taken the place of phone calls and different things like that, right? It's become almost a centralized part of our lives. And then because of that though, people want something new, something different. So you have the advent of, you know, as by extension then Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and so forth, right? As sort of flowing out of that Facebook world and continuing to develop and adopt these new tools and then they become normalized and they become a preferred form of mediated communication, right? So, but all of this impact is impacted by us. It's not just the technology driving everything. It's okay, what's the human role in this? Do we decide to accept this technology or not? Do we make it a normal, you know, sort of normalize it and make it a central part of our lives? Or is it just kind of this oddity that sits out there and a few people use it, but not most people, it's not mainstream. And does it become, you know, this central part of our communication life? So there is a human element to this though. It's not just the technology driving human development. It's this symbiosis of humans and technology interacting together and engaging together and growing and evolving together, right? So it's important to remember again that we have this symbiotic relationship, technology and human beings and the environment, meaning again, the context, the culture in which we live all work together and kind of, you know, we're in this mix influencing one another at all times, right? It's like if you were a kid and you had siblings or you went somewhere with your friends, if you were all in the back seat, three or four people in the back seat, right? You're all kind of nudging each other, trying to get a little more space, right? But you're impacting the others and there's only so much space. And so if one person moves to the left, that means somebody's losing some space with it. So you're all impacting everything that one person does when one person gets wiggly, it affects everybody. The same thing is true with human interaction and technology and the environment, culture and systems around us. When one of those things gets wiggly, the others are affected and they impact one another, they grow together, they evolve together. That's the idea behind media ecology and looking at the relationship between those things and the way that they impact our connection with and the way that we relate to one another. So I hope that you'll dig into this a little further. It's really a fascinating area that I've only been able to really scratch the surface of. So I truly hope that you'll spend a long more time with this on your own as you're able. If you have any questions in the meantime about media ecology or anything else related to media communication, please feel free to email me. I would love to chat with you and share any ideas that you might have and provide the insight that I can on this topic. In the meantime again, I hope that you will give some consideration to what your relationship is with technology, how that impacts your connection with others and the way that you communicate and relate to others and how we see this unfolding down the road and how that may change as these things grow and as we grow and change in our own, what we have available to us for communication.