Channels, Fall 2016

Alford • Choosing to Choose Page 44 McLuhan argued that the “medium is the message,” suggesting that the technological medium significantly influences what people find important. McLuhan (1967) explained: Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. The alphabet, for instance, is a technology that is absorbed by the very young child in a completely unconscious manner, by osmosis so to speak. Words and the meaning of words predispose the child to think and act automatically in certain ways. The alphabet and print technology fostered and encourage a fragmenting process, as process of specialism and detachment. Electronic technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement. It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of working of media. (p. 8) Technological advancement prioritizes human senses. The values of technology also become the values of society. The lens of media ecology is rarely used in media analysis today. Abstinence from this model may be explained by the communication field's disdain for technological determinism, which they mistakenly conflate with the theories associated with media ecology. While many media ecologists clearly are influenced by determinism, they would not describe themselves as technological determinists. McLuhan (1967) stated, "there is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening” (p. 25). The future world that McLuhan and Ellul imagine was based on the culture's current trajectory, but through their writing they sought to change that trajectory. Media ecology, like most theoretical lenses, has a tendency to reduce complicated interactions to one cause. This is not the intention of this paper. The lens of media ecology, however, helps illuminate the framework of modernity and challenge the precepts of technique’s dominant ideologies through discussion. American culture today does appear to believe that the most efficient way to do something is always the better way to do something. Our drive to automate industry, the rise of “micro-blogging” platforms like Twitter, and the general movement to more and more efficient means of communication through the world wide web demonstrate this cultural tendency. That more efficient means are superior means is an unexamined assumption that has dangerous implications for human expression and choice. By studying Flusser and Ellul's analysis of modern society, this paper will show the dangers of passively accepting the mechanistic social order and make the case that increased technological literacy and human dialogue may help to solve the problem. Ontology Ontology is the study of existence. Thinkers from Aristotle to Augustine to Descartes attempted to answer the question “what does it mean to exist?” But it wasn't until the twentieth century when Heidegger published his treatise Being and Time that academia started to understand human existence clearly. The battery of questions that Heidegger laid