From Media Ecology to Media Evolution

Since the emergence of the world wide web, media ecology has gone through some deep and fast mutations. The one-to-many media paradigm (broadcasting) has been displaced from its hegemonic position by the many-to-many media paradigm (networking) and the “old media species” must now compete with the “new” and adapt to the different conditions of the media. Never in the long history of Homo sapiens has our social-technological network gone through such an accelerated and unpredictable paradigm shift. In this context, the chapter introduces the basics of media ecology (including references to the contributions of Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Walter Ong and disciples like Lance Strate, Bob Logan and Joshua Meyrowitz) and reflects on the possibilities of a new discipline – media evolution – for dealing with past, contemporary and future transformations of the media ecosystem. The chapter includes references to a series of researchers working in media evolution and proposes to produce the first map of this emerging discipline and its challenges.