Biological Basis
A simple thought experiment highlights the biological basis of media naturalness theory, and the fundamental difference between the media naturalness and media richness theories. Let us assume that the human species had evolved in an ancestral environment without light. If that were the case, modern humans would all be blind, and therefore a communication medium’s ability to convey facial expressions and body language would be irrelevant for effective communication. Conversely, a medium’s ability to convey smell might be fairly important for effective communication. This illustrates the fact that one cannot define a medium’s ability to support effective communication without taking into consideration characteristics of the communicators. Of these, biological characteristics often have an evolutionary basis.
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