The Mind Map of Media Ecology

Marshall McLuhan claimed that he did not produce a holistic theory. He said, “I don’t explain, I explore” and insisted that his ideas were just “probes”. They were, indeed, rather a set of observations and multifarious concepts that were not necessarily in systematic relation with each other. For the followers, McLuhan’s legacy is a toolbox, not a single doctrine. Similarly, media ecology is not a doctrine or a theory. It gathers concepts and thinkers from a wide range of backgrounds. The only thing they have in common is the focus on media as media and media as environments. Because of such peculiarity of this “field of enquiry”, finding a method for the systematic and integrative description of media ecology is a difficult task.