Media evolution: emergence, dominance, survival, and extinction in the media ecology

Abstract

This article presents an integrated model for understanding the evolution of media,/naiming to go beyond the traditional reflections—which tend to reduce media history to a/nlinear succession of technologies—to propose an integrated view of media evolution./nConstructing a model of media evolution means going beyond the concepts used up until/nnow—such as Bolter and Grusin’s remediation—to integrate into a single framework/nanalytical categories such as emergence, adaptation, survival, and extinction. In this/ntheoretical context, the article pays particular attention to the simulation processes that/noccur in the different phases of the evolution of a medium. Finally, a series of critical/nreflections on the sequential-linear and genealogical-branched evolution models are/npresented to propose alternatives that represent the complexity of the media ecosystem/nmore closely.