The New Ecology 15
outlined by Shadbolt and others, particularly with great advances in
computing power. Yet, the desire of big tech to move towards monopolisation of information flows seeks to limit emergent behaviours among
consumers so as better to guide them towards a particular platform –
aided, as Franklin Foer observes, by governmental tendencies to view
antitrust legislation through the eyes of Thurman Arnold’s distrust of
inefficiency rather than Louis Brandeis’s attempts to combat monopolies
as antithetical to public values.
16
Because of a tendency to use the phrase
“digital ecosystem” in a restrictive sense, media ecology is better suited
for my purposes to describing large technology systems that are open to
emergent and complex behaviour.
Media ecology as a concept is older than complexity theory: its roots
lie, as with so much media theory, in the work of Marshall McLuhan and
Walter Benjamin, but in the 1970s, Christine Nystrom and Neil Postman used the term to draw together observations by Kenneth Boulding,
Thomas Kuhn, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that, during the twentieth
century, a fundamental shift had taken place in mankind’s world view.
As such, media ecology began to be formulated at in the early seventies
as a metadiscipline engaged in the study of media and complex communication systems as environments.
17
Lance Strate has recently outlined how
the work of figures such as McLuhan and Postman, as well as other scholars such as Walter Ong, has created a rich context for artists, creatives,
managers, executives, and even politicians in which the media operates
within a field rather than a discipline and a well-defined subject, being
fundamentally interdisciplinary.
18
An essential tenet of media ecology,
as Dennis Cali, drawing on Postman, observes is that “the introduction
of any new agent into an environment changes that environment”.
19
Although not discussed by Cali, this approach is particularly fruitful when
viewed from the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT) as outlined
by theorists such as Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law, especially insofar as it demonstrates the capacity of nonhuman actors to effect change in a network.
20
While ANT theorists have been criticised for
attributing intentionality to nonhuman actors (for example, by Langdon
Winner
21
), the demonstrable effects on a whole range of complex systems by nonhuman agents – whether the impact of Milankovitch cycles
on climate change or a botnet distributed denial of service (DDoS) – are
particularly important to considering the role of technological agents
within contemporary media ecologies. Indeed, the recognition that nonhuman agents can function as mediators allows us to bracket off one of
the thorny philosophical issues surrounding artificial intelligence, that is
whether it needs to be conscious (and thus intentional) to be considered
truly intelligent. Termites may lack those attributes we would recognise
as demonstrating consciousness, but that has not stopped one group of
researchers classifying them as “soil engineers”, capable of effecting major changes in tropical and subtropical ecosystems.
22
outlined by Shadbolt and others, particularly with great advances in
computing power. Yet, the desire of big tech to move towards monopolisation of information flows seeks to limit emergent behaviours among
consumers so as better to guide them towards a particular platform –
aided, as Franklin Foer observes, by governmental tendencies to view
antitrust legislation through the eyes of Thurman Arnold’s distrust of
inefficiency rather than Louis Brandeis’s attempts to combat monopolies
as antithetical to public values.
16
Because of a tendency to use the phrase
“digital ecosystem” in a restrictive sense, media ecology is better suited
for my purposes to describing large technology systems that are open to
emergent and complex behaviour.
Media ecology as a concept is older than complexity theory: its roots
lie, as with so much media theory, in the work of Marshall McLuhan and
Walter Benjamin, but in the 1970s, Christine Nystrom and Neil Postman used the term to draw together observations by Kenneth Boulding,
Thomas Kuhn, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that, during the twentieth
century, a fundamental shift had taken place in mankind’s world view.
As such, media ecology began to be formulated at in the early seventies
as a metadiscipline engaged in the study of media and complex communication systems as environments.
17
Lance Strate has recently outlined how
the work of figures such as McLuhan and Postman, as well as other scholars such as Walter Ong, has created a rich context for artists, creatives,
managers, executives, and even politicians in which the media operates
within a field rather than a discipline and a well-defined subject, being
fundamentally interdisciplinary.
18
An essential tenet of media ecology,
as Dennis Cali, drawing on Postman, observes is that “the introduction
of any new agent into an environment changes that environment”.
19
Although not discussed by Cali, this approach is particularly fruitful when
viewed from the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT) as outlined
by theorists such as Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law, especially insofar as it demonstrates the capacity of nonhuman actors to effect change in a network.
20
While ANT theorists have been criticised for
attributing intentionality to nonhuman actors (for example, by Langdon
Winner
21
), the demonstrable effects on a whole range of complex systems by nonhuman agents – whether the impact of Milankovitch cycles
on climate change or a botnet distributed denial of service (DDoS) – are
particularly important to considering the role of technological agents
within contemporary media ecologies. Indeed, the recognition that nonhuman agents can function as mediators allows us to bracket off one of
the thorny philosophical issues surrounding artificial intelligence, that is
whether it needs to be conscious (and thus intentional) to be considered
truly intelligent. Termites may lack those attributes we would recognise
as demonstrating consciousness, but that has not stopped one group of
researchers classifying them as “soil engineers”, capable of effecting major changes in tropical and subtropical ecosystems.
22