16 The New Ecology
As the approach to media ecologies espoused here draws upon ANT,
an important addition is the notion of object-oriented ontology, or flat
ontology (the latter being the preferred term here). Drawing upon a range
of philosophers working in the first decades of the twenty-first century,
including Graham Harman, Levi Bryant, Ian Bogost, and Timothy Morton, as well as Manuel DeLanda (who coined the term “flat ontology”),
this approach rejects the privileging of human subjects over nonhuman
objects, as well as the notion of “undermining” or “overmining” objects. The latter is usually encountered when thinkers argue that objects
are manifestations of some deeper, underlying substance or force: this
is not necessarily metaphysical in the usual sense, although historically
this is where it has been most commonly encountered, as in Plato’s notion that physical objects were manifestations of the ideal world, but can
also apply to modern physical notions that the perceptual objects of the
world – stars, planets, dogs, coffee cups – are better understood via the
underlying relations between atoms and forces. This is what is referred
to as undermining, whereas overmining deals with nineteenth-century
idealism or twentieth-century theories of social constructivism, which
holds either that there is nothing beyond what is perceived by the mind
or that objects cannot be perceived outside language or the power structures of discourse.
23
The roots of flat ontological thinking lie in the
phenomenology of Heidegger and Husserl, and, alongside ANT, the approach is especially important in establishing the reality of nonhuman
objects that have agency within a system. A typical criticism of such flat
ontologies is that they display a tendency towards nihilism, degrading
meaning by reducing human values to “a fluke in an uncaring and fundamentally entropic universe”.
24
Such a criticism does not necessarily
invalidate the notion of flat ontologies: instead, the assumption that is
made in this book is that human values are not essentialist and selfevident, but must always be critiqued and worked through in a system.
While media ecological theories, as espoused here, draw together
media theorists and sociological/phenomenological philosophies, they
will not completely neglect approaches to ecology more generally which
provide the underlying model for the metaphor. As Pablo Marquet et al
argue, there is something of a mistrust of theory in ecological thinking
because theories such as those dealing with island bio-geographies or
optimal foraging tend to focus on one or two hypotheses and models
and thus fail in the overarching aim of theoretical work, which is to
extrapolate from empirical data to advances via deductions from those
data.
25
The authors argue that there are some efficient theories that are
genuinely useful for environmental extrapolation, such as the optimal
foraging theory and the MTE (whereby interplay among processes is
affected by individual metabolic rates) – as well as a great many inefficient ones. They also note that deductive models based on inductive
approaches will become more important, not less, in understanding
As the approach to media ecologies espoused here draws upon ANT,
an important addition is the notion of object-oriented ontology, or flat
ontology (the latter being the preferred term here). Drawing upon a range
of philosophers working in the first decades of the twenty-first century,
including Graham Harman, Levi Bryant, Ian Bogost, and Timothy Morton, as well as Manuel DeLanda (who coined the term “flat ontology”),
this approach rejects the privileging of human subjects over nonhuman
objects, as well as the notion of “undermining” or “overmining” objects. The latter is usually encountered when thinkers argue that objects
are manifestations of some deeper, underlying substance or force: this
is not necessarily metaphysical in the usual sense, although historically
this is where it has been most commonly encountered, as in Plato’s notion that physical objects were manifestations of the ideal world, but can
also apply to modern physical notions that the perceptual objects of the
world – stars, planets, dogs, coffee cups – are better understood via the
underlying relations between atoms and forces. This is what is referred
to as undermining, whereas overmining deals with nineteenth-century
idealism or twentieth-century theories of social constructivism, which
holds either that there is nothing beyond what is perceived by the mind
or that objects cannot be perceived outside language or the power structures of discourse.
23
The roots of flat ontological thinking lie in the
phenomenology of Heidegger and Husserl, and, alongside ANT, the approach is especially important in establishing the reality of nonhuman
objects that have agency within a system. A typical criticism of such flat
ontologies is that they display a tendency towards nihilism, degrading
meaning by reducing human values to “a fluke in an uncaring and fundamentally entropic universe”.
24
Such a criticism does not necessarily
invalidate the notion of flat ontologies: instead, the assumption that is
made in this book is that human values are not essentialist and selfevident, but must always be critiqued and worked through in a system.
While media ecological theories, as espoused here, draw together
media theorists and sociological/phenomenological philosophies, they
will not completely neglect approaches to ecology more generally which
provide the underlying model for the metaphor. As Pablo Marquet et al
argue, there is something of a mistrust of theory in ecological thinking
because theories such as those dealing with island bio-geographies or
optimal foraging tend to focus on one or two hypotheses and models
and thus fail in the overarching aim of theoretical work, which is to
extrapolate from empirical data to advances via deductions from those
data.
25
The authors argue that there are some efficient theories that are
genuinely useful for environmental extrapolation, such as the optimal
foraging theory and the MTE (whereby interplay among processes is
affected by individual metabolic rates) – as well as a great many inefficient ones. They also note that deductive models based on inductive
approaches will become more important, not less, in understanding