A Media Ecology Review

摘要

Ultimately, we can turn to books such as Albert Einstein's Relativity, the Special and the General Theory (1954), and Werner Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy (1958) to understand the physical universe as a medium. Such a course would be entirely in keeping with Postman and Weingartner's discussion of the "Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski-Ames-Einstein-Heisenberg-Wittgenstein-McLuhan-Et Al. Hypothesis" (p. 101), which could be updated to include Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (1998). Einstein's physics is as much about relationships, and therefore the process of mediation, as Martin Buber's philosophy, as expressed in I and Thou (1970), for example. Farrell (2000) discusses in detail how Buber contributed to Walter Ong's own understanding of media ecology, and it is therefore not surprising to find Ong (2002b) explaining the relationship between these macro and micro level relationships: Knowledge of the relationships between the microcosm (the human being) and the macrocosm (the universe), which has for ages been a major concern of philosophy at least in the West, has grown circumstantially as never before. These relationships have become urgent, consciously or subconsciously, so that they are now discussed not only in scientific literature but also through the popular media. The result has been enforcement of a general sense of cosmic holism more detailed and intense than ever before imaginable. Earlier thought had maximized distinctions; ecological thinking maximizes connections, relationships. The ecological state of mind was rooted initially in biology, but when we speak of our age as the "ecological age" we are referring to its attention to interconnections that are far more generalized than simply biological connections. We live in an age of countless conspicuous interconnections.