Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture Volume 23 (2004) No. 2 IN THIS ISSUE A Media Ecology Review Lance Strate Fordham University AQUARTERLY REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION RESEARCH ISSN: 0144-4646 From the Editor Communication Research Trends Lance Strate’s excellent report on “media ecolo- Volume 23 (2004) Number 2 gy” studies approaches the subject from a literary and http://cscc.scu.edu philosophical perspective, with some input from anthropological and psychiatric sources. Many com- Published four times a year by the Centre for the Study of munication researchers explore the same territory Communication and Culture (CSCC), sponsored by the using sociological and psychological methods that California Province of the Society of Jesus. often are quantitative. For example, media effects Copyright 2004. ISSN 0144-4646 research, including much important work on media and children (cf., N. Pecora, “Children and Television,” Editor: William E. Biernatzki, S.J. Communication Research Trends, Volume 19 (1999), Managing Editor: Paul A. Soukup, S.J. Nos. 1 and 2) really deals with the cultural environ- ment in which we live and the ecological relationships it involves. The approaches may use different methods, Subscription: but they can and should support each other, in the quest Annual subscription (Vol. 23) US$45 for a broader understanding of the role of the media in our lives. Payment by check, MasterCard, Visa or US$ preferred. For payments by MasterCard or Visa, send full account —W. E. Biernatzki, S.J. number, expiration date, name on account, and signature. General Editor Checks and/or International Money Orders (drawn on USA banks; for non-USA banks, add $10 for handling) should be made payable to Communication Research Trends and sent to the managing editor Paul A. Soukup, S.J. Communication Department Santa Clara University Table of Contents 500 El Camino Real A Media Ecology Review Santa Clara, CA 95053 USA 1. Introduction . 3 Transfer by wire to: Bank of America, 485 El Camino 2. McLuhan . 6 Real, Santa Clara, California. 95050, Account 00425- 3. Innis and American Cultural Studies . 8 14510, Routing #121000358. Add $10 for handling. 4. The Toronto School . 10 5. Ong . 12 Address all correspondence to the managing editor at the 6. Orality-Literacy Studies . 13 address shown above. 7. Media History . 15 Tel: +1-408-554-5498 8. Postman . 18 Fax: +1-408-554-4913 9. The New York School and email: [email protected] Communication Studies . 19 10. Mumford, Technics, and Ecological History . 24 The Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture 11. Ellul and Technology Studies . 28 (CSCC) is an international service of the Society of Jesus 12. Formal Roots . 31 established in 1977 and currently managed by the 13. Conclusion . 37 California Province of the Society of Jesus, P.O. Box 519, References . 38 Los Gatos, CA 95031-0519. 2— VOLUME 23 (2004) NO. 2 COMMUNICATION RESEARCH TRENDS A Media Ecology Review Lance Strate Fordham University [email protected] 1. Introduction …our first thinking about the subject was guid- respective institutions, Saint Louis and New York ed by a biological metaphor. You will remember Universities, were instrumental in establishing the foun- from the time when you first became acquainted dations of media ecology as a field of inquiry. with a Petri dish, that a medium was defined as Moreover, Walter Ong set the standard and demonstrat- a substance within which a culture grows. If you ed the possibilities for scholarship in the media ecology replace the word “substance” with the word intellectual tradition, and Neil Postman exemplified the “technology,” the definition would stand as a practice of media ecology analysis by a public intellec- fundamental principle of media ecology: A medium is a technology within which a culture tual engaged in social criticism. Working parallel to one grows; that is to say, it gives form to a culture’s another, Ong and Postman built upon an intellectual tra- politics, social organization, and habitual ways dition that has its roots in the ancient world, a tradition of thinking. Beginning with that idea, we that coalesced in response to the revolutions in commu- invoked still another biological metaphor, that of nication, media, and technology of the 19th and 20th ecology. We put the word “media” in the centuries, and brought it into the 21st century. front of the word “ecology” to suggest that we In viewing Ong and Postman as twin pillars of were not simply interested in media, but in the media ecology, I do not mean to deny that there are sig- ways in which the interaction between media nificant differences between them. Certainly, it would and human beings gives a culture its character be possible to contrast their midwest and east coast and, one might say, helps a culture to maintain backgrounds and their Roman Catholic and Reform symbolic balance. (Postman, 2000, pp. 10-11) Jewish faiths. We could also differentiate Ong’s histor- ical focus from Postman’s emphasis on current affairs, Ong’s phenomenological approach from Postman’s Our present fascination with ecology of all kinds grounding in linguistics, and Ong’s dialectic of the oral is tied in with the information explosion that has and the literate from Postman’s of the word and the marked our age. With the information explo- sion, we have become more and more conscious image. But what separates the two scholars is over- of the interrelationships of all the life and struc- shadowed by what they hold in common: a shared per- tures in the universe around us, and, with our spective and sensibility, and a strong connection to the more and more detailed knowledge of cosmic most celebrated of all media ecology scholars, and organic evolution, ultimately of interrelation- Marshall McLuhan. In fact, media ecology can be ships as building up to and centering on life, and understood as an intellectual network in which eventually human life. The human environment McLuhan, Ong, and Postman constitute the prime is of course not just the earth but the entire uni- nodes (corresponding geographically to Toronto, St. verse, with its still incalculable expanse and an Louis, and New York City). age of around some 12 to 14 billion years. This is Media ecology is a perspective that embodies the real cosmos within which human beings what Ong (1977) refers to as “ecological concern,” appeared and still exist. (Ong, 2002b, p. 6) which he describes as “a new state of consciousness, I would like to dedicate this essay to the memories the ultimate in open-system awareness. Its thrust is the of Walter J. Ong, S.J. and Neil Postman, who passed dialectical opposite of the isolating thrust of writing away within two months of each other, Ong on August and print” (p. 324). Ong goes on to suggest that con- 12th and Postman on October 5th of 2003. Through temporary questions of ecological concern their careers and the body of work they have left us, echoed earlier thinking culminating in Darwin’s these two educators, both of whom achieved the highest work, which has shown how species themselves, possible academic rank, University Professor, at their COMMUNICATION RESEARCH TRENDS VOLUME 23 (2004) NO. 2 — 3 earlier thought of as the closed-system bases of media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. life and taken to be major elements in philosoph- The word ecology implies the study of environments: ical thinking, are not fixed but develop through their structure, content, and impact on people” (p. 161). natural selection brought about by open interac- These environments consist of techniques as well as tion between individuals and environment. The technologies, symbols as well as tools, information new philosophical attention to openness appears systems as well as machines. They are made up of not unrelated to the opening of previously isolat- modes of communication as well as what is commonly ed human groups to one another fostered by elec- tronic communications media, telephone, radio, thought of as media (although the term “media” is used and ultimately television. (p. 324) to encompass all of these things). Thus, Postman also describes media ecology as “the study of transactions Such ecological concern is central to McLuhan’s among people, their messages, and their message sys- approach to studying media, as he explains in the intro- tems” in The Soft Revolution (1971, p. 139), which he duction to the second edition of Understanding Media co-authored with Charles Weingartner. (2003a): Where Postman defines media ecology as a field of “The medium is the message” means, in terms of inquiry, McLuhan places greater emphasis on praxis the electronic age, that a totally new environment when he uses the term. For example, in a 1977 television has been created. The “content” of this new envi- interview, in response to the question, “what now, briefly, ronment is the old mechanized environment of is this thing called media ecology,” McLuhan answers: the industrial age. The new environment It means arranging various media to help each reprocesses the old one as radically as TV is other so they won’t cancel each other out, to but- reprocessing the film. For the “content” of TV is tress one medium with another. You might say, the movie. TV is environmental and impercepti- for example, that radio is a bigger help to litera- ble, like all environments. We are aware only of cy than television, but television might be a very the “content” or the old environment. When wonderful aid to teaching languages. And so you machine production was new, it gradually created can do some things on some media that you can- an environment whose content was the old envi- not do on others.