Media evolution

Abstract

Since the emergence of the World Wide Web the media ecology has gone through deep transformations. While the broadcasting paradigm was displaced from its hegemonic position by the networking paradigm, the “old media species” are constrained to compete with the “new” ones and must adapt to the new conditions of the media ecology. Never in the long history of Homo sapiens has our social-technological network gone through such an accelerated and unpredictable shift. In this context the chapter reflects on the possibilities of a new discipline – media evolution – in grade of dealing with past, contemporary, and future transformations of the media ecology. After introducing how the Darwinian model was applied in the analysis of technology evolution, the chapter presents a general overview of approaches that should be part of any theoretical conversation about media evolution: Levinson’s anthropotropic theory of media mutations, Logan’s reflections of media evolution from the perspective of language, complexity, and emergent phenomena, and Manovich’s contributions around the computer metamedium and its hybridizations. The chapter concludes with a map of interlocutors for the construction of a media evolution theory and presents a first list of possible methodologies to apply in this emergent field.