If McLuhan Were Alive

...he'd be a member of the Media Ecology Association. Marshall actually came up with the term Media Ecology, and worked with Neil Postman to create the Media Ecology program at NYU. While the program went to the great beyond with Postman's passing, it has morphed into an international organization of people from a wide range of fields who look at the way media and culture influence one another.

Their conferences fall somewhere between a traditional academic conference and a DisinfoCon. And, best of all, they're open to papers and presentations from anyone. My favorites of the past few years were one by Lian Amaris on the World of Warcraft funeral raid, and Corey Anton on the Tao and media.

I just received the call for submissions for the next conference, and I encourage anyone with interesting ideas about any aspect of media to make a submission. This isn't one of those stodgy academic groups, so you don't have to present in any officially recognized format. Just tell them what you want to talk about, or do. I can promise you'll have an audience of smart, weird, and friendly people giving feedback you can use. In the flesh.

Call for papers Media Ecology Association 2009 Annual Convention June 18-21, 2009 Saint Louis University St. Louis, Missouri

"Ecology" a word derived from the Greek words meaning "household knowledge." For the 2009 MEA convention, we seek papers on any aspect of media ecology. Special interest in the places and spaces of media interactions: Silicon Valley or St. Louis; screen, studio, library, or street. Does place matter? Local systems, larger systems, and changing relationships in the ecology of media. The role(s) of media in different ecological systems. The changing geography of media: Why do some forms emerge and others recede? The ethics of (not) setting boundaries. Living in information systems: Are we the center, the web, the flaneur? What is the I in the culture of iPods, iPhones, and iGames? Because the 2009 MEA Convention will meet at Saint Louis University, where Walter J. Ong was a faculty member, papers on any aspect of his work are especially welcome. Papers and session proposals should be sent by January 15 to Prof. Sara van den Berg, Dept. of English, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63108-3414. Electronic submissions (preferred) to [e-mail]. All submissions will be acknowledged.

This meeting will be sponsored by the Walter J. Ong Center for Language and Culture, the Department of English, and the Department of Communication at Saint Louis University. This conference will feature special exhibits and tours of the Walter J. Ong Archives and a reception at the Pius XII Library. Housing (single rooms/private bath) will be available at Reinert Hall ($44/night) or the Water Tower Inn ($85/night).

http://www.media-ecology.org

• [HyperTeam]

  Missouri?! I would love to have a very long coffee chat with these guys but kinda hard to justify time and expense to go to Missouri…

• [IamInnocent]

  Hey, maybe your best one Rushkoff.

  Thanks :)

• [Marshall McLuhan]

  I heard what you were saying. You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!

• [wolfiesma]

  When you talk about an ecological setting, you better mean a nice green outdoor space, not an ipod or a flat screen tv. Ecology means trees, healthy soil, etc. We need more trees along the streets, not more technology.

• [Steve Schnier]

  I agree with the comment by Marshall McLuhan @2. How can you presume to say what someone would say, do or endorse in thier absence (and especially after thier death)?

  Would Marshall McLuhan drink Diet Pepsi? Would he shop at the GAP?

  Have you ever noticed that dead people aways agree with the people who write about them?

• [Travis]

  As a current PhD student in the department, I’d like to let it be known that the Media Ecology program at NYU did not “go into the great beyond” with the passing of Neil Postman- it changed its name to Media, Culture and Communication and is thriving (we just hired Arjun Appadurai as a senior faculty member).

  Media Ecology is an interesting and fruitful theoretical lens (or metaphor?) through which to understand communication technologies and their effects, but is unfortunately not strong enough to be (as McLuhan and Postman obviously hoped) the foundation of a field.

  So, while you may be right in mourning the passing of the department as primarily a refuge of McLuhanesque scholarship, its rebirth as a more diversified and theoretically progressive department- which can greatly be attributed to the leadership of the current chair Ted Magder- should be welcomed.

• [wolfiesma]

  I didn’t mean for my comments to be so dismissive. It is possible you can be for trees and for technology, I just… oh, nevermind.

• [Beanolini]

  #3, Wolfiesma

  Ecology means trees, healthy soil, etc.

  Not really. Ecology means the study of “the relationship of the organism to the environment”. It’s perfectly valid to use the term to describe the study of human response to their built environment.

  If McLuhan were alive today… he’d be banging on the lid of his coffin, trying to get out.

• [rushkoff]

  Seeing as media-ecology is McLuhan’s legacy and that its members are his students and colleagues, I think he’d be hanging out with his friends and in the organization he basically started.

  Sorry if my remarks seemed disparaging to NYU. All I knew was that Postman died and then the media-ecology department was no more. I’m glad to hear that there is still a place for people to study these things, even if they can no longer get a degree with the name or from the exact program that McLuhan envisioned.

  All I meant to show – through these two facts – is that if McLuhan’s media-ecology meme is indeed surviving, it is best represented by the media-ecology association, which is continuing the particular (if flawed and insular) tradition that McLuhan stood up at a press conference with Neil Postman and officially dubbed media-ecology.

  It is true that he might have completely disowned it, or even gone into gardening or cobbling were he alive today.