#mediaecologies

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Week 3: Media ecologies

I grew up as a child of the 'net generation' and I cannot imagine anything different. For me, time spent 'chilling out' as an 8 year old meant time spent staring at a Windows '97 monitor doing random Google searches. In high school, afternoons were spent chatting to friends on MSN for hours on end and sending meaningless albeit hilarious emoticons to one another (it didn't matter that we had just spent all day at school together). Come university and I can send a text quicker than I can handwrite a sentence. So I got to talking to my Dad the other day about just how different our upbringings really were. Sure, we had similar values instilled in us, were both made to snack on Vegimite sandwiches and apples and get a job when we were old enough to see over the counter, and we even grew up in the same suburb. But dare I say Dad grew up in a simpler time, when reality was reality and that was that. He would get home from school and play in the street until dark, or go down to the beach. Instead of hanging out with his friends online, they would, you know, actually go and hang out at one another's houses. This got me to thinking, just how far has society really come in in the past century and how much have media technologies had to do with this? Does 'reality' even have the same meaning anymore?

As technology has advanced over the past century, a social evolution has unfolded and continues to unfold. Today, media is not only a part of our daily lives but it is actually shaping and reshaping our everyday human experiences. The line between what is reality outside of media technologies and what becomes our everyday reality because of media technologies is blurred.

This brings me to the concept of media ecologies, which as discussed in the lecture is an apt way of describing the realm of reality that has been created by the colliding of humans and media technologies. Neil Postman described this concept in the lecture as 'Media ecology is the study of media as environments'. Media and society have interjected to create a perpetually evolving and unfolding online environment where everyone and everything is linked. The lecture further explained this by saying 'Rather than a closed and harmonious system, an ecology is open and unstable, driven by internal dynamics and external shocks'. For example, not only are technologies linked and continuing to be linked even further each day, such as Facebook and Instagram and how you can search for both on Google, but the world is also becoming more closely tied and a much smaller place thanks to these media technologies. 

Many questions come up for me when unpacking this concept. The biggest and scariest question that came to mind was how do we as young adults of the 'net generation' experience reality compared to our parents experiences of reality when our experiences are so closely linked with media technologies? For example, I went skydiving in Switzerland last year, and posted a status on Facebook about it right before I did it. Afterwards, I uploaded a video of the skydive up onto Facebook, and linked a photo from my Instagram. Would I have had the same experience if media did not exist? Nobody all the way back in Australia would have even known I had jumped out of a plane that morning, until I got home and told them of my experience in person. It is scary to think how closely tied our experiences are with media. I can't help but wonder, do media exist for us or do we exist for media? 

Lecture word: Machinic 

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Blog one - Media Ecologies

“Machinic” The theory of ‘Media Ecology’ centres on the belief that technology not only influences society, but practically influences all walks of life. (‘Media Ecology’, Wikipedia) The idea of ‘media ecology,’ similar to the idea of technological determinism, was introduced by Marshall McLuhan in 1964 and later developed by Neil Postman. It is one that I find particularly interesting. Besides the fact that it provides an original opinion on social growth and personal conduct, I think it resonates perfectly with the western society of the 21st century. Being a ‘90’s kid,’ my generation was able to experience two vastly different decades, one with modern technology and one without. Although most of us had televisions, mobile phones or computers growing up, most other technological advancements seemed to be a thing of a very distant future. Fast forward 10 years and we see a social and technological change that we couldn’t have imagined in our wildest dreams. Touch screens, I-pod’s, motions sensors, voice activation, this list barely scratches the surface of how far we’ve come. Although we spent so much time without them, it seems now that if one were to misplace their mobile phone, i-pod or laptop, life itself would cease to matter. Most people these days would agree that these technologies facilitate our existence, an idea shared by Neil Postman. (‘What is Media Ecology’, Media Ecology Association) Further, ideas discussed by McLuhan are also evident in our everyday walks of life. According to McLuhan ‘technologies are extensions of human capacities,’ (‘Theoretical Frameworks’, Murphie, Andrew and Potts, John) an idea evident in the fact that every form of technology we have is developed and manufactured to address the thoughts or needs or the public. Furthermore, McLuhan discusses how technology, in all its different forms, are arranged to work in unity, rather than overtaking each other. This concept is particularly true in today’s society, as epitomized in the fact that platforms such as Skype, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, to name a few, are constantly found pre-loaded as default in new devices such as phones or computers. This unity even goes so far as to uniting all the different platforms we use within technology, such as Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon and more, together on the online arena, done with the use of ‘share to’ buttons or the ability to upload things to other sites from another. The assemblage of these technologies together, creates a technological ecosystem. (‘Media Ecologies’ Fuller, Matthew, Introduction and ‘The first digital medium’ Levinson, Paul) Lastly, as a practical example of this theory, I thought of the times when I’d carry a CD player to school. Once upon a time, the CD player effectively served one function, allowing us to listen to music on the go. In today’s age however, the I-pod has managed to not only revolutionize the way we interact with music or society, but it has shaped a majority of our daily routines. This includes the use of apps, giving us a clock, calendar, diary, music player and computer all in the one device and the fact that it has effectively changed the way we associate with our surroundings. This is apparent in considering the majority of us in public, are glued to these important devices rather than partaking in real social conduct. Overall, I found this topic to be highly insightful, providing me with an idea which had never occurred to me before. It is apparent now that the vast influence that technology has over our everyday life, does in fact shape almost every aspect of our being. POSTED ON: 21/03/2013 By: Shikha Jaipuriar z3375518 References: Fuller, Matthew (2005) ‘Introduction: Media Ecologies’ in Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture Cambridge, MA; MIT Press: 1-12 Levinson, Paul (1997) ‘The First Digital Medium’ in Soft Edge; a natural history and future of the information revolution London: Routledge Media Ecology Association ‘What is Media Ecology’ < http://www.media-ecology.org/media_ecology/ > ‘Media Ecology’, Wikipedia < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology > Murphie, Andrew and Potts, John (2003) ‘Theoretical Frameworks’ in Culture and Technology London: Palgrave Macmillan