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The term Media Ecology was first formally introduced by Neil Postman in 1968, while the concept of the theory was proposed by Marshall McLuhan in 1964. Media Ecology Theory centers on the principles that technology puts profound influences on the society while technology remain control over virtually all walks of life. It is a study of how media and communication processes affect human perception and understanding. To strengthen this theory, McLuhan and Quentin Fiore claim that it is the media of the epoch defines the essence of the society by presenting four epochs, inclusive of Tribal Era, Literate Era, Print Era and Electronic Era, which corresponds to the dominant mode of communication of the time respectively. McLuhan argues that media act as extensions of the human senses in each era, and communication technology is the primary cause of social change.

To understand how media affects large structural changes in human outlook, McLuhan classify media as either hot or cool. Hot media refers to a high-definition communication that demands little involvement from audience, whereas, Cool media describes media that demands active involvement from audience. McLuhan with his son Eric McLuhan expanded the theory in 1988 by developing a way to look further into the effects of technology on society. They offer the tetrad as an organized concept that allows people to know the laws of media, the past, present and current effects of media.

Media ecology is a contested term within media studies for it has different meanings in European and North American contexts. The North American definition refers to an interdisciplinary field of media theory and media design involving the study of media environments. The European version of media ecology is a materialist investigation of media systems as complex dynamic systems.

Definition
According to the Media Ecology Association, media ecology can be defined as "the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs."

In 1977, Marshall McLuhan said that media ecology:


 * ...means arranging various media to help each other so they won't cancel each other out, to buttress one medium with another. You might say, for example, that radio is a bigger help to literacy than television, but television might be a very wonderful aid to teaching languages.  And so you can do some things on some media that you cannot do on others.  And, therefore, if you watch the whole field, you can prevent this waste that comes by one canceling the other out.

Inspired by McLuhan, Neil Postman founded the Program in Media Ecology at New York University in 1971. He described it as:


 * Media ecology looks into the matter of how media of communication affects human perception, understanding, feeling, and value, as well as how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people.

Corey Anton, Editor of Explorations in Media Ecology at Grand Valley State University, defines media ecology as:


 * A broad based scholarly tradition and social practice. It is both historical and contemporary, as it slides between and incorporates the ancient, the modern, and the post-modern. . . .More precisely, media ecology understands the on-going history of humanity and the dynamics of culture and personhood to be intricately intertwined with communication and communication technologies.

Along with McLuhan, Postman , and Anton, media ecology draws from many authors, including the work of Harold Innis, Walter Ong, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Eric Havelock, Susanne Langer, Erving Goffman, Edward T. Hall, George Herbert Mead, Margaret Mead, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and Gregory Bateson.

Assumptions of the theory

 * Media infuse every act and action in society.
 * Media fix our perceptions and organize our experiences.
 * Media tie the world toghter.

History
In 1934, McLuhan went on to study at Cambridge University, a school which literally pioneered modern literary criticism and here he met one of his notable mentors I.A. Richards, a distinguished English professor. McLuhan admired Richard’s approach to criticism view that English studies are themselves nothing but a study of the process of communication. Richards believed that "Words won't stay put and almost all verbal constructions are highly ambiguous". It was this element of Richards’ perspective on communication that influenced the way in which McLuhan expressed many of his ideas using metaphors and phrases such as "The Global Village" and "The Medium Is the Message" two of his most well known phrases that encapsulate the theory of Media Ecology.

McLuhan used the approaches of Richards and William Empson as an "entrée to the study of media." However it took many years of works before he was able to successfully fulfill their approaches. McLuhan determined that. "If words were ambiguous and best studied not in terms of their "content" but in terms of their effects in a given context and if the effects were often subliminal, the same might be true of other human artifacts, the wheel, the printing press, the telegraph and the TV". This led to the emergence of his ideas on Media Ecology.

North American context VS. European Context
[original text] The European version of media ecology rejects the North American notion that ecology means environment. Ecology in this context is used 'because it is one of the most expressive language currently has to indicate the massive and dynamic interrelation of processes and objects, beings and things, patterns and matter.' (Fuller 2005:2) Following theorists such as Felix Guattari, Gregory Bateson, and Manuel DeLanda the European version of media ecology as practiced by authors such as Matthew Fuller and Jussi Parikka presents a post-structuralist political perspective on media as complex dynamical systems. The North American theory of media ecology is best phrased by Marshall McLuhan, "The medium is the message". McLuhan saw the message and the medium to mean the same thing. With society being formed around the dominant medium of the day, the specific medium of communication makes a remarkable difference. McLuhan believed there are three inventions that transformed the world: the phonetic alphabet, the printing press, and the telegraph. Due to these technologies the world was taken from one era into the next.[4] In order to understand the effects of symbolic environment, McLuhan split history into four periods: the tribal age, the literate age, the print age, and the electronic age. Throughout the structure of their distinctive methods of communication (e.g., oral, written, printed, electronic), different media arouse patterns in the brain that are distinctive to each and every particular form of communication.[4] The North American variant of media ecology is viewed by numerous theorists as meaningless or “McLuhanacy”. These theorists[citation needed] claim that McLuhan used a subjective approach to make a objective claims. The theorists[who?] against McLuhan's idea, also believe that he lacked the scientific evidence to support his claims.[citation needed][4]

Media History
Tribal Era Literate Era Print Era Electronic Era

The Tetrad of Technology
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