Ernest A. Hakanen, Alexandra L. Jenkins, Greg Loring-Albright
{"title":"Expanding the canon","authors":"Ernest A. Hakanen, Alexandra L. Jenkins, Greg Loring-Albright","doi":"10.1386/eme_00123_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00123_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48879969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The postmodern church is one that embeds within it the trappings of the digital age. These institutions, whether manifesting as a megachurch with thousands of congregants or a humble emergent church with an intricate website and decent local following, tend to default to therapeutic modes of operating their churches; for instance, the implementation of stage lighting, projection screens or contemporary music serves to create an emotional response from congregants rather than one of spiritual reflection. This article seeks to understand the church in this current moment within a media ecological framework. First, it attends to the postmodern church, considering three major components that comprise the model: modern architecture, in-house technology, and internet and social media use. Next, the article attends to Neil Postman’s work, particularly Technopoly, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and an essay written in ETC: A Review of General Semantics about propaganda to understand the media ecological underpinnings of the digital age. Finally, the article addresses the implications of the postmodern church as made evident through Postman’s scholarship. Overall, this article seeks to address the question: ‘How can the work of media ecologists aid in the understanding of the postmodern, digitized church’, using Postman as the primary scholar of interest.
后现代教会是一个嵌入了数字时代装饰的教会。这些机构，无论是一个拥有数千名会众的大教堂，还是一个拥有复杂网站和体面当地追随者的简陋的新兴教堂，都倾向于默认其教堂的治疗模式；例如，舞台灯光、投影屏幕或当代音乐的实施有助于创造会众的情感反应，而不是精神反思。本文试图在媒体生态框架内理解当下的教会。首先，它关注后现代教堂，考虑了构成该模型的三个主要组成部分：现代建筑、内部技术以及互联网和社交媒体的使用。接下来，这篇文章关注Neil Postman的作品，特别是Technopoly，Amusing Ourselves to Death，以及一篇写在《ETC:A Review of General Semantics》上的文章，内容是关于理解数字时代媒体生态基础的宣传。最后，文章论述了后现代教会的含义，这一点从波斯曼的学术研究中可见一斑。总的来说，这篇文章试图解决这样一个问题：“媒体生态学家的工作如何有助于理解后现代、数字化的教会”，Postman是感兴趣的主要学者。
{"title":"The great symbol drain of Christianity: Neil Postman and the postmodern church","authors":"Kati E. Sudnick","doi":"10.1386/eme_00128_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00128_1","url":null,"abstract":"The postmodern church is one that embeds within it the trappings of the digital age. These institutions, whether manifesting as a megachurch with thousands of congregants or a humble emergent church with an intricate website and decent local following, tend to default to therapeutic modes of operating their churches; for instance, the implementation of stage lighting, projection screens or contemporary music serves to create an emotional response from congregants rather than one of spiritual reflection. This article seeks to understand the church in this current moment within a media ecological framework. First, it attends to the postmodern church, considering three major components that comprise the model: modern architecture, in-house technology, and internet and social media use. Next, the article attends to Neil Postman’s work, particularly Technopoly, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and an essay written in ETC: A Review of General Semantics about propaganda to understand the media ecological underpinnings of the digital age. Finally, the article addresses the implications of the postmodern church as made evident through Postman’s scholarship. Overall, this article seeks to address the question: ‘How can the work of media ecologists aid in the understanding of the postmodern, digitized church’, using Postman as the primary scholar of interest.","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48661378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
When new technologies emerge, they inevitably bring to mind many of the same questions that media scholars have been asking for decades. In this study, we will analyse Apple AirPods through a theoretical framework based in the writings of media ecologists like Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, as well as media theorist Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno is included here because very few articles in media ecology scholarship discuss his contributions to media research. The exclusion of Adorno from media ecology appears to relate to his different ontological assumptions about media. While Innis, McLuhan and Postman contribute to the ‘structures and patterns narrative’ of medium theory, Adorno clearly fits into the ‘power and resistance narrative’ of critical/cultural studies. However, there are more significant connections between Adorno and the field of media ecology than have been previously acknowledged. In particular, there is a confluence between Adorno’s writings and others by media ecology scholars like Postman and Lewis Mumford, particularly in Adorno’s arguments about technology and music. In this article, we consider the question: can Adorno’s writings on technology be considered appropriate for inclusion in the media ecology canon? In this article, we will explore representative essays from Adorno’s extensive body of work on music reproduction technologies and discuss the parallels between his arguments and those made by others in media ecology.
当新技术出现时，它们不可避免地会让人想起许多媒体学者几十年来一直在问的问题。在本研究中，我们将通过基于媒体生态学家如Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan和Neil Postman以及媒体理论家Theodor W. Adorno的著作的理论框架来分析Apple AirPods。这里包括阿多诺，因为在媒体生态学研究中很少有文章讨论他对媒体研究的贡献。将阿多诺排除在媒介生态学之外，似乎与他对媒介的不同本体论假设有关。英尼斯、麦克卢汉和波兹曼为媒介理论的“结构和模式叙事”做出了贡献，而阿多诺显然符合批判/文化研究的“权力和抵抗叙事”。然而，阿多诺与媒介生态领域之间的联系比之前所承认的更为重要。特别是，阿多诺的著作与波兹曼(Postman)和刘易斯·芒福德(Lewis Mumford)等媒体生态学学者的著作有一处相通之处，尤其是阿多诺关于技术和音乐的观点。在这篇文章中，我们思考这样一个问题:阿多诺关于技术的著作是否适合被纳入媒介生态学经典?在这篇文章中，我们将探索阿多诺关于音乐复制技术的大量作品中的代表性文章，并讨论他的论点与媒体生态学中其他人的论点之间的相似之处。
{"title":"Music technologies and AirPods: Considering Theodor Adorno as media ecologist","authors":"S. Church, Audrey Halversen, Brent Yergensen","doi":"10.1386/eme_00132_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00132_1","url":null,"abstract":"When new technologies emerge, they inevitably bring to mind many of the same questions that media scholars have been asking for decades. In this study, we will analyse Apple AirPods through a theoretical framework based in the writings of media ecologists like Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, as well as media theorist Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno is included here because very few articles in media ecology scholarship discuss his contributions to media research. The exclusion of Adorno from media ecology appears to relate to his different ontological assumptions about media. While Innis, McLuhan and Postman contribute to the ‘structures and patterns narrative’ of medium theory, Adorno clearly fits into the ‘power and resistance narrative’ of critical/cultural studies. However, there are more significant connections between Adorno and the field of media ecology than have been previously acknowledged. In particular, there is a confluence between Adorno’s writings and others by media ecology scholars like Postman and Lewis Mumford, particularly in Adorno’s arguments about technology and music. In this article, we consider the question: can Adorno’s writings on technology be considered appropriate for inclusion in the media ecology canon? In this article, we will explore representative essays from Adorno’s extensive body of work on music reproduction technologies and discuss the parallels between his arguments and those made by others in media ecology.","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41642608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Digital technologies not only alter the material fabric of cities, but condition and constrain the complex networks of trust that emerge among neighbours and strangers as they engage one another in shared civic spaces. In this sense, a media ecology of the city would borrow from studies of urban sociology, political economy and cybernetics to reconsider what ethical implications smart technologies would have when sown into the fabric of an urban environment. This article introduces Jane Jacobs’s urban theory as a complexity approach to media ecology that provides insight into how urban environments, as media of communication and commerce, cultivate the ethical character of social relations among neighbours and strangers. It is argued that Jacobs’s urban theory provides sufficient ground for figuring the ethical implications of highly integrated and ubiquitous digital technologies within the organized complexity of urban environments and offers an alternative way of cultivating urban ecologies of communication.
{"title":"The kind of problem a smart city is","authors":"Austin Hestdalen","doi":"10.1386/eme_00130_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00130_1","url":null,"abstract":"Digital technologies not only alter the material fabric of cities, but condition and constrain the complex networks of trust that emerge among neighbours and strangers as they engage one another in shared civic spaces. In this sense, a media ecology of the city would borrow from studies of urban sociology, political economy and cybernetics to reconsider what ethical implications smart technologies would have when sown into the fabric of an urban environment. This article introduces Jane Jacobs’s urban theory as a complexity approach to media ecology that provides insight into how urban environments, as media of communication and commerce, cultivate the ethical character of social relations among neighbours and strangers. It is argued that Jacobs’s urban theory provides sufficient ground for figuring the ethical implications of highly integrated and ubiquitous digital technologies within the organized complexity of urban environments and offers an alternative way of cultivating urban ecologies of communication.","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46557873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Quiddity and formal cause: How things become ‘what’ they are","authors":"C. Anton","doi":"10.1386/eme_00134_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00134_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47669898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article attempts to critically assess the concept of a ‘fourth milieu’ of ‘virtuality’ as possibly unique and distinct from Jacques Ellul’s technical milieu (the third of Ellul’s theoretical ‘three milieus’). The proposed fourth milieu challenges the very definition and boundary between ‘the real’ and the virtual, the rational and the irrational, the sacred and the profane, the human subject and the virtual subject. I argue that Ellul’s dialectical studies on the nature of ‘the word’ and ‘the image’ suggest that the internet is the space of the ‘irrational’ within the general ‘rational’ milieu that constitutes the technological organization of our society. Contrary to a ‘virtual’ milieu, I argue that the internet is the dialectical pole of ‘irrationality’, a parallel domain that exists in tension with the ‘rational’ pole of industrial society. Ellul’s concepts of the ‘sacred’ and ‘sacred of transgression’ contribute to the dialectical dynamics that are discussed in this article.
{"title":"The internet as a sacred and irrational space within the Ellulian milieu of ‘technique’","authors":"Hossein Turner","doi":"10.1386/eme_00129_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00129_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article attempts to critically assess the concept of a ‘fourth milieu’ of ‘virtuality’ as possibly unique and distinct from Jacques Ellul’s technical milieu (the third of Ellul’s theoretical ‘three milieus’). The proposed fourth milieu challenges the very definition and boundary between ‘the real’ and the virtual, the rational and the irrational, the sacred and the profane, the human subject and the virtual subject. I argue that Ellul’s dialectical studies on the nature of ‘the word’ and ‘the image’ suggest that the internet is the space of the ‘irrational’ within the general ‘rational’ milieu that constitutes the technological organization of our society. Contrary to a ‘virtual’ milieu, I argue that the internet is the dialectical pole of ‘irrationality’, a parallel domain that exists in tension with the ‘rational’ pole of industrial society. Ellul’s concepts of the ‘sacred’ and ‘sacred of transgression’ contribute to the dialectical dynamics that are discussed in this article.","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42236906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the hypothesis that the Soviets built a society on the principles of media ecology. The media ecology of the Soviets had three sources: the materialistic (economic) determinism of Marxism, the environmentalism of Russian literature and the Bolsheviks’ goals of socialist upbuilding. Moreover, the determination to build a new society made Soviet ‘media ecology’ not just descriptive or critical but proactive. The Soviet media ecology could be nothing else but applied media ecology. The notion of media-ecological engineering is advanced in this article to describe the applied character of Soviet ‘media environmentalism’. The article is a part of a larger project, ‘The media ecology of socialism’, which aims at a media-ecological analysis of socialism in general and the Soviet mentality particularly.
{"title":"Media-ecological engineering of the Soviets","authors":"Andrey Mir","doi":"10.1386/eme_00126_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00126_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the hypothesis that the Soviets built a society on the principles of media ecology. The media ecology of the Soviets had three sources: the materialistic (economic) determinism of Marxism, the environmentalism of Russian literature and the Bolsheviks’ goals of socialist upbuilding. Moreover, the determination to build a new society made Soviet ‘media ecology’ not just descriptive or critical but proactive. The Soviet media ecology could be nothing else but applied media ecology. The notion of media-ecological engineering is advanced in this article to describe the applied character of Soviet ‘media environmentalism’. The article is a part of a larger project, ‘The media ecology of socialism’, which aims at a media-ecological analysis of socialism in general and the Soviet mentality particularly.","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46996213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article highlights the utility of combining postphenomenology and media ecology to understand how experience is mediated in the context of location-based games. While both conceptual approaches are concerned with mediation, their analytical toolkits have different and complementary emphases. Postphenomenology is particularly well suited to examining the nature of human–media relations, while media ecology encourages us to apprehend these human–media relations in the context of complex entanglements of relations. This holistic approach is essential to understand how practitioners of location-based games experience the world. Such experience is influenced by many factors, including other entities that participants encounter in the landscape, other participants, the rules and roles of the game and locative media infrastructures. In this article, I explore the processes by which one location-based game, geocaching, mediates experience of the landscape. To do so, I draw primarily on a case study from the fieldwork conducted with geocachers in Melbourne, Australia.
{"title":"Towards an integrated theory of mediation: Combining postphenomenology and media ecology to understand the experience of location-based games","authors":"Ale Prunotto","doi":"10.1386/eme_00131_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00131_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article highlights the utility of combining postphenomenology and media ecology to understand how experience is mediated in the context of location-based games. While both conceptual approaches are concerned with mediation, their analytical toolkits have different and complementary emphases. Postphenomenology is particularly well suited to examining the nature of human–media relations, while media ecology encourages us to apprehend these human–media relations in the context of complex entanglements of relations. This holistic approach is essential to understand how practitioners of location-based games experience the world. Such experience is influenced by many factors, including other entities that participants encounter in the landscape, other participants, the rules and roles of the game and locative media infrastructures. In this article, I explore the processes by which one location-based game, geocaching, mediates experience of the landscape. To do so, I draw primarily on a case study from the fieldwork conducted with geocachers in Melbourne, Australia.","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48806236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Based on the theories of Yuri Rozhdestvensky, this article considers vers libres a ‘third’ genre: neither prose nor poetry, but a separate artistic form where prose and poetry intersect. As other types of speech, free verse is influenced by the changes in communication technologies. Using representative examples of Russian free verse, the article studies this influence. It traces the correlations between Russian vers libres and oral genres, including proverbs and fables, and between vers libre and written genres, specifically sacred texts: psalms and prayers. It explains the influence of print technology on free verse, shows that prose printed texts can be close to free verse, and explains why scientific texts, even well written, cannot. It demonstrates how Russian verlibrists responded to mass media styles and pressures, highlighting the use of irony. The patterns and regularities observed for the Russian material may be applicable to free verse in other languages, pending further research.
{"title":"Free verse and speech texture","authors":"V. Kupriyanov","doi":"10.1386/eme_00127_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00127_1","url":null,"abstract":"Based on the theories of Yuri Rozhdestvensky, this article considers vers libres a ‘third’ genre: neither prose nor poetry, but a separate artistic form where prose and poetry intersect. As other types of speech, free verse is influenced by the changes in communication technologies. Using representative examples of Russian free verse, the article studies this influence. It traces the correlations between Russian vers libres and oral genres, including proverbs and fables, and between vers libre and written genres, specifically sacred texts: psalms and prayers. It explains the influence of print technology on free verse, shows that prose printed texts can be close to free verse, and explains why scientific texts, even well written, cannot. It demonstrates how Russian verlibrists responded to mass media styles and pressures, highlighting the use of irony. The patterns and regularities observed for the Russian material may be applicable to free verse in other languages, pending further research.","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47322216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article addresses classroom furnishings from a media ecological perspective. I tell the story of how ‘buoy’ and ‘node’ chairs in an ‘activity permissible’ classroom ‘cooled-down’, complicated, and undermined the educational environment. In particular, I explain how the ‘message’ of these furnishings – the extensions afforded by their design – clashed with both pedagogical needs and the subject-matter of the course. I conclude that ‘activity permissible’ furnishings are not necessarily ‘better’ furnishings, and that the media ecology of furnishings is an essential consideration in the designing and assigning of classrooms.
{"title":"Rolly chairs and media ecology: Applying communication theory to the activity permissible classroom","authors":"Valerie V. Peterson","doi":"10.1386/eme_00135_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/eme_00135_7","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses classroom furnishings from a media ecological perspective. I tell the story of how ‘buoy’ and ‘node’ chairs in an ‘activity permissible’ classroom ‘cooled-down’, complicated, and undermined the educational environment. In particular, I explain how the ‘message’ of these furnishings – the extensions afforded by their design – clashed with both pedagogical needs and the subject-matter of the course. I conclude that ‘activity permissible’ furnishings are not necessarily ‘better’ furnishings, and that the media ecology of furnishings is an essential consideration in the designing and assigning of classrooms.","PeriodicalId":36155,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Media Ecology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44131885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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