Day 10 Lecture Summary

Today we touched on Media Ecology
Media Ecology is the study of media environments. Such as media technology, we will also be looking at the environment.
Marshall Mcluhan is a man who has some very interesting suggestions on clothing being extensions of our nervous system.
The medium is the message.
*How media affects us, e.g. how we understand information, how we organise our daily lives and how we relate to each other.
Tetrad of media
Questions asked are-
1. What does a medium enhance or extend
2. What does it obsolesce
3. What does it retrieve from older media
4. What does it reverse or flip when pushed to its extreme
Neil Postman –brings up the idea that technology has a downside. He says technologies are just techniques used by people. These techniques are used for social and cultural purposes.
Media, Technology and Culture.
Mcluhans focus on media as channels and vectors of communication.
Some contemporary Media Ecologists
· Erin Mcluhan
· Lance Strate
· Robert Logan
How does the internet shape certain things such as artwork. We are internetworked individuals!... we don’t use internet that isolate one another.

Relating this lecture to previous lectures:
Session 1- what is the invisible environment
Session 2- appreciating how environment has come to be as it is
Session 3- a shift in history about some ideas about social media
Session 4-introducing creative commons (in order to shape relationship/environment between social media and the law)
Session 5- Philosophy-the nature of reality (the biggest invisible environment of ALL)
Session 6- Video games, an example of a particular medium
Session 7 and 8- Politics (is a big part of our environment- especially in new media technologies)Session 9- Artwork, idea of the internet as a medium but a medium of creativity- unique to the internet.
The three ecologies: environment, social and mental.
If our environments are invisible we need to constantly draw attention to them!
The experience of everyday life is not based on one medium, but MANY- multiplexity