Ethics and the study of media as environments1

Abstract

Despite the different positions that Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman took in regard to moral or ethical judgements, common ground can be found in the insistence that we first need to work towards understanding media, and only then can we take part in their ethical evaluation. Media ecology, as the study of media as environments and the study of environments as media, is also the study of the conditions we live under, that in turn condition us. Based in part on the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, the human condition can be divided into three basic categories, the symbolic, the technological and the biophysical, with the possible addition of a fourth, the spiritual. As part of the human condition, ethics can be considered a medium with a message of its own, a medium that is altered as we move from oral to chirographic, typographic and electronic media environments. Building on this understanding, we can develop a media ecology ethics, and to that end, some basic elements of a media ecology ethics are introduced.