After televisions in trees.

ECHOES AND REFLECTIONS: ON MEDIA ECOLOGY AS A FIELD OF STUDY

BY LANCE STRATE

CRESSKILL, NJ: HAMPTON PRESS, 2006

192 PP./$23.95 (SB)

PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNICATION: THE MEDIA ECOLOGY TRADITION

EDITED BY CASEY MAN KONG LUM

CRESSKILL, NJ: HAMPTON PRESS, 2006

421 PP./$37.50 (SB)

What is media ecology? That is a question that both Casey Man Kong Lum's Perspectives on Culture, Technology and Communication: The Media Ecology Tradition and Lance Strate's Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study attempt to answer. As a media ecology graduate student, my favorite definition was "televisions in trees," a pun on the idea of media and natural ecology. Joking aside, these books offer a serious academic attempt to answer the question.

I should confess that I do have personal and professional relationships with both Lum and Strate. I remember spending time with Lum as he debated who should and should not be included in the anthology, and I tend to agree with most of his choices. As Strate notes, media ecology is a multidisciplinary perspective with many ideas contributing to its rich intellectual landscape. I was also present at several of the events Strate describes in his book, including the debut of his article, "Echo and Narcissus."

These two books present two different types of reading experiences. A relatively small book and a quick read, Echoes and Reflections is divided into two distinct parts. The first half is a review of the literature of media ecology. This would be a good beginner's guide to navigating media ecological readings because of the wide net that Strate casts in his analysis, including the work of Antonio Damasio, Sigmund Freud, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and Camille Paglia. This section is ultimately a roadmap to media ecological thinking. In the second half of the book, Strate moves to a more personal subject--autism. As the parent of an autistic child, Strate incorporates his personal feelings for his daughter into his scholarly analysis. Based on a series of essays and lectures that he has presented over the past several years, this part of the book is a personal reflection on communication and autism, making connections to media ecological thinking. After reading this book one comes to the conclusion that media ecology can be related to just about anything.

Lum's book is an academic text requiring close examination and can be effectively used in the classroom. However, while many major media ecology scholars are mentioned (e.g., James Beniger, Irving Goffman, and Gary Gumpert) others, like Alan Kay, are absent. Although Thomas F. Gencarelli's chapter, "Neil Postman and the Rise of Media Ecology," does illuminate aspects of Postman that were previously unknown to me, the man was far more multifaceted than a single chapter can describe. One could also say that media ecology is far too multidisciplinary to be encapsulated in two books.

Lum's task was not an easy one. How do you pick from the wide range of scholars that contribute to the media ecological tradition? Obviously, you start with the most cited James Carey, Jacques Ellul, Harold Innis, Susanne K. Langer, McLuhan, Ong, Postman, and Benjamin Lee Whorf--and go from there. The book does a good job of explaining the basic concepts these scholars brought to the intellectual tradition called media ecology. Artists will be particularly interested in Christine Nystrom's chapter, "Symbols, Thought, and 'Reality': The Contributions of Benjamin Lee Whorf and Susanne K. Langer," and John Power's chapter "Susanne Langer's Philosophy of Mind: Some Implications for Media Ecology." These chapters focus on different forms of representation and the role of symbolic meaning in media ecological studies. As Langer argues, the most basic features of anything exist in its form. It is the form of a medium rather than its content that molds and shapes our view of the world. This is the essence of media ecological thought.

Lum's book offers an academic approach to the subject, while Strate's book is an easy read and more accessible. I recommend both of these books to anyone wrestling, as I am, with the question: what is media ecology?

SUSAN BARNES is a professor in the communication department at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, and the author of Online Connections: Internet Interpersonal Relations (2001) and Computer-Mediated Communication: Human-to-Human Communication Across the Internet (2003).