Media Ecology - Critics

Critics

According to Neil Postman, Media ecology is concerned with understanding how technologies and techniques of communication control the form, quantity, speed, distribution, and direction of information; and how, in turn, such informational configurations or biases affect people's perceptions, values, and attitudes . . . such information forms as the alphabet, the printed word, and television images are not mere instruments which make things easier for us. They are environments-like language itself, symbolic environments with in which we discover, fashion, and express humanity in particular ways (Anton 303). Postman focuses on media technology, process, and structure rather than content. Postman considered making moral judgments was the primary task of media ecology. "I don't see any point in studying media unless ones so within a moral or ethical context (Griffin 319)." Postman's media ecology approach asks three questions: What are the moral implications of this bargain? Are the consequences more humanistic or antihumanistic? Do we, as a society, gain more than we lose, or do we lose more than we gain?

McLuhan's critics state the medium is not the message. They believe that we are dealing with a mathematical equation where medium equals x and message equals y. Accordingly x = y, but really "the medium is the message" is a metaphor not an equation. His critics also believe McLuhan is denying the content altogether, when really McLuhan was just trying to show the content in its secondary role in relation to the medium. McLuhan says technology is an “extension of man” and when the way we physically sense the world changes it to will collectively change how we perceive it, but the content may or may not affect this change in perception. McLuhan said that the user is the content, and this means that the user must interpret and process what they receive, finding sense in their own environments.

One of McLuhan’s high profile critics was Umberto Eco. Eco comes from background in semiotics, which goes beyond linguistics in that it studies all forms of communication. He reflected that a cartoon of a cannibal wearing an alarm clock as a necklace was counter to McLuhan’s assertion that the invention of clocks created a concept of time as consistently separated space. While it could mean this it could also take on different meanings as in the depiction of the cannibal. The medium is not the message. An individual’s interpretation can vary. Believing this to be true Eco says, “It is equally untrue that acting on the form and content of the message can convert the person receiving it.” In doing this Eco does merges form and content, the separation of which is the basis of McLuhan’s assertion. McLuhan does not offer a theory of communication. He instead investigates the effects of all media mediums between the human body and its physical environment, including language.

As Lance Strate said: "Other critics complain that media ecology scholars like McLuhan, Havelock, and Ong put forth a "Great Divide" theory, exaggerating the difference between orality and literacy, for example. And it is true that they see a great divide between orality and literacy. And a great divide between word and image. And a great divide between the alphabet, on the one hand, and pictographic and ideographic writing, on the other. And a great divide between clay tablets as a medium for writing and papyrus. And a great divide between parchment and paper. And a great divide between scribal copying and the printing press. And a great divide between typography and the electronic media. And now a great divide between virtuality and reality. I could continue to add to this list, but the point is that there are many divides, which suggests that no single one of them is all that great after all. The critics miss the point that media ecology scholars often work dialectically, using contrasts to understand media."

The North American variant of media ecology is viewed by numerous theorists as meaningless or "McLuhanacy". Neil Compton said in 1968 that it had been next to impossible to escape knowing about Mcluhan and his theory as the media embraced them. Compton wrote, “it would be better for McLuhan if his oversimplifications did not happen to coincide with the pretensions of young status-hungry advertising executives and producers, who eagerly provide him with a ready-made claque, exposure on the media, and a substantial income from addresses and conventions.” Theorists such as Jonathan Miller claim that McLuhan used a subjective approach to make objective claims, comparing McLuhan’s willingness to back away from a “probe” if he does not find the desired results to that of an objective scientist who would not abandon it so easily. The theorists against McLuhan's idea, also believe that he lacked the scientific evidence to support his claims.Raymond Rosenthal said, “McLuhan’s books are not scientific in any respect; they are wrapped however in the dark, mysterious folds of the scientific ideology."