Here is Neil Postman’s simple description of media ecology:
Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean ‘ecological’ in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.
-Neil Postman, Technopoly, p. 18
I have heard a pharmacist say, ‘When we added computers to the pharmacy it changed the pharmacy.’ It wasn’t that the old pharmacy stayed virtually the same with the addition of computers: it became a new pharmacy; the pharmacist’s job acquired a new job description entirely. I’ve also heard church folk say the same about adding big screens in the sanctuary. It isn’t the old environment with the addition of plasma: it’s a new environment. The same goes for the boardroom, the classroom, the living room, the bedroom, and anywhere else.
This is not to say that change will always be bad. A new environment may cause the inhabitants to flourish. But we need to count the cost before making the change. We need to thoughtfully consider whether a total change in the environment is wanted or needed.
Wow. Very true! I’ve appreciated Mars Hill Audio discussions that bring up the issue of “displacement” with technology, but I think what Neil Postman says her about “ecological change” includes the possibility of displacement, but incorporates an even greater sense of the total action that occurs with the introduction of new “stuff”.