🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“A convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others.”

~ Ivan Illich

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Greetings, dear newsletter subscribers!

As I mentioned last week, we will be taking a brief two-week break from our study of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death. In the meantime, we will revisit my interview with one of Postman's chief protégé's, Professor Lance Strate. You can watch the interview at the above link, or read the text below:

Herman:

What is the anthropology of media ecology?

Lance Strate:

Well, first of all, I would say that media ecology can take just about anything as its subject matter, so it intersects in significant ways with anthropology. There are a number of important media ecology scholars—scholars that we consider to be media ecologists—who come from anthropology, such as Edmund Carpenter, who was a close associate of Marshall McLuhan, and Dorothy Lee, who kind of bridged the gap in the world of linguistic anthropology, which is part of our field as well. Going back to Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir before that, but then later on, in terms of orality and literacy, you get someone like Jack Goody. I mean, there are quite a few folks coming from anthropology who apply media ecological approaches and take up media ecological questions.

The question of what it means to be human, I would say, is a very important one for media ecology. Now, I gave the book that I wrote, Understanding Media Ecology, the subtitle "An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition" because, you know, I would say that McLuhan's book Understanding Media actually downplays what the book is really about, because it is about understanding the human condition. If it's just about understanding media, you know, that's interesting and all, but that's a kind of narrow idea. What we're really about is understanding the effects of media on ourselves, which is the effects of what we're doing to ourselves.

So there are different camps, I would say, within media ecology, because it's not an ideology, it's not an "ism." It's a way of thinking about things, a way of approaching—so I use the word "approach"—a way of approaching a particular subject matter.

If we're thinking about what it means to be human, at least for some folks, there is a question of what is natural or normal or typical for being human, and then how far have we gone astray through our development of more and more technology. But for others, there are ideas that part of what being—of what it means to be human—is technology. As we continue to create new technologies, we are continuing to evolve ourselves and to make progress as human beings. That is part of what being a human being is all about: not to remain static and set in our ways, but to continue to develop ourselves. So I would say that both of these are ways of looking at what it means to be human within the field of media ecology.

Herman:

Well, I'll definitely have to read that book. And like I said, I'm very much enjoying Amazing Ourselves to Death.

Lance Strate:

Thank you. Yeah.

Herman:

Would you say…do you feel that your book UnderstandingMedia Ecology is your seminal work?

Lance Strate:

Yeah, that's the one. It's the book I had to write in order to go to my grave peacefully. If I didn't write that book, I would be the hungry ghost—I think that’s the Japanese concept—I'd be haunting people like you.

But yeah, so that was the one, and it was my take on media ecology that I said I would—I talked about writing back in the '90s and always got sidetracked or put things off. So it really developed over that time. But I think that with that book, I've kind of largely nailed it, at least as far as my thinking is concerned on the subject. Part of it—and it's back to the point about being human—is bringing in Hannah Arendt and her work The Human Condition, which I find to be media ecological and fits in nicely, helps to provide a good grounding for thinking about media ecology.

OK…that’s it for today...hope you enjoyed this excerpt from my interview with Professor Lance Strate! Have a great week/end!

Warmly,

Herman

PS: Do you know of someone who might be interested in the topics we're discussing? If so, please forward this email on to them!