Reaction to "Notes Toward an Intellectual History of Media Ecology" by Casey M.K. Lum.

I read a small part of Lum's article, pages 28-38, over "Studying Media as Environments," otherwise known as media ecology and defined by Postman in the late 1960's early 1970's. Media ecology focuses on explaining how media as an environment impacts humans on varying levels. Lum writes that people live in various media environments and that these environments interact in different ways. These interactions impact the way people construct the world around them. In the field of media ecology Lum notes that there are three theoretical propositions that dominate the field.

The first being that the structure of a given medium defines the nature of the information. The second notes that, "the different physical and symbolic forms inherent in different communications media presupposes correspondingly different biases," (Lum, 2006). The last one builds on the second, "communication media facilitate various psychic or perceptual, social, economic, political, and cultural consequences that are relative to the media's intrinsic biases," (Lum, 2006). All theses theories realize that different communication technologies impact humans in a profound way. Lum then goes on to make a historiography of media. Lum categorizes them in four main communication epochs. The first being orality, the second literacy, the third typography and the last being he electronic media epoch.

The electronic media epoch is the epoch that we now live. This is where the article really makes me think we live in a fun time. A time where my generation is one of the first generations to grow up in the computer age. That puts us at a great position in reflecting on how our lives have revolved around new technology compared to people of different times with other 'new' technologies. The internet is currently changing the world around us in many ways and I get a first hand seat to these global changes. Makes you wonder where we will go with this new medium and where exactly have we already been?