digital media ecology
It’s the social system technology is embedded in that matters
digital media ecology
Media mediate the world for us in our interactions with everything. Therefore, everything we see and experience is, basically, media representations of that everything. There are no economic, political, physical or whatever else phenomena or events that we can experience immediately without the mediation of our tools, interfaces, and technologies.
Andrey Mir • The mind map of media ecology
In the end, transhumanism and other techno-utopian ideas have served to advance what Lanier calls an “antihuman approach to computation,” a digital climate in which “bits are presented as if they were alive, while humans are transient fragments.” In a way we are already living the dualistic existence that Kurzweil promised. In addition to our
... See moreMeghan O'Gieblyn • God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
Algorithmic media companies exploit the difference between our attentional instincts and aspirations. In so doing, they make it harder for us to become who we might wish to be.
nytimes.com
The engagement with digital flow is stimulated by hormonal rewards—evolutionary physiological mechanisms that encourage people to search for something useful and share it with others for bonding and recognition, much like real hunting and gathering.
Andrey Mir • The Digital Reversal. Thread-saga of Media Evolution
If professional editors serve as gatekeepers, determining the importance of various stories before publication, the Internet opens the gates, deciding on the significance of content after it’s published. Hence, it’s not just a collective editor—it’s what I call the Viral Editor. Anyone can post anything, including rubbish. But people then vote with... See more
Andrey Mir • The Viral Inquisitor
platforms as assignment editors
There is consensus and cohesion within the crowds, but often not across them. Every crowd proclaimed itself the public, while it is merely a public.
Invisible Rulers
Every new medium creates a new environment. As we adapt to the environment, it shapes our perceptions and thoughts, our relationships with others, even our sense of self.
Nicholas Carr • Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
Postman: Technological change is ecological…One significant change generates total change.
“Each medium creates a new orientation for thought, expression, and sensibility.”
This phenomenon in the insect world is known as stigmergy : a mechanism of indirect coordination, where each action leaves a “trace” that makes it easier for a succeeding action to occur.
Adam Aleksic • banality of the algorithm
As Sean Illing, a co-author of “The Paradox of Democracy,” told me, “McLuhan says: Don’t just look at what’s being expressed; look at the ways it’s being expressed. And then Postman says: Don’t just look at the way things are being expressed; look at how the way things are expressed determines what’s actually expressible.” In other words, the... See more