From Me to You: The Ecology of Media

The term ecology of media was a phrase foreign to me until I enrolled in mass communications and will be explained with a simple biological metaphor. But now I want to dedicate this post to a search engine giant, a program, a corporation and a lifestyle; Google. This website is amazing, it gives me access to any piece of information that I want. I can Google "what is 6 X 187268" and get an answer instantly, or I could search "history of math" and learn why 6 X 187268 is 1 123 608. Google dominates my firefox, it is my homepage and my only means of searching. It launched in 1998 with a very interesting story, it began in a garage with two students, and became something they could never have imagined. Neil Postman explains the ecology of media as a petri dish, replacing certain terms will give a clear definition. You will remember from the time when you first became acquainted with a Petri dish, that a medium was defined as a substance within which a culture grows. Postman continues to say that if you remove the term 'substance' and replace it with technology, then you have defined what the ecology of media is. The invention of any new 'popular' technology is a funny thing. The world is like the petri dish, the substance inside is the technology and whatever begins to grow with the substance is society. We just can't wait to latch ourselves onto a new technology. To us, anything that is faster, better and more efficient then our last of piece of technology is automatically accepted. I can personally relate to this, I decided that my days of buying cheap computers were over, I was going to buy a mac; and not just any mac, a macbook laptop. It cost me a summers work and $1500, and I loved it. It was faster, more reliable and lets face it, just downright sexier then my old one. I was in love with my white polycarbonate macbook, that is until the sleek new aluminum 2009 model appeared 3 months after I bought mine. Saying I was pissed off would be an understatement, but then I realized that it didn't matter what I bought, in this day in age something is always waiting in the shadows to upstage it. Which is why I have chosen google for this post, it is almost timeless because it is a technology that I believe will never be upstaged. Society has chosen google as their search engine, and nothing even comes close to being as popular. The entire world is at my fingertips when that six letter website loads, and I believe that information is more powerful then anything physical in this world, which makes this technology one of the most unique inventions of ALL time.

Postman, Neil. "The Humanism of Media Ecology." Keynote Address Delivered at the
Inaugural Media Ecology Association Convention. Media Ecology Association .
Web. 10 Oct. 2009. .