Explorations in Media Ecology - Volume 24, Issue 2, 2025

This editorial welcomes new members to the editorial staff of Explorations in Media Ecology and pays tribute to the late scholar Gary Gumpert.

The symbolic communication and language characteristic of the human species provides us with tools for thought, and its survival value is evidenced by the fact that speech appears to be universal to all human societies. The invention of writing conferred many additional advantages but led to the misconception that meaning is located in the message or text and not in the communicators. From a behaviourist approach based on Pavlov and others, meaning can be understood as a response to a stimulus. The distinction between symbol and signal is therefore not due to the inherent characteristics of the signs themselves but rather a product of the response elicited by them, or what in general semantics is referred to as the semantic reaction. Insofar as meaning resides within the communicators, and therefore remains subjective, it is the medium that constitutes the only objective part of the message, hence the basic media ecology notion, as articulated by McLuhan, that the medium is the message.

This article puts in dialogue and extends Flusser’s articles, ‘Don Juan’ and ‘On progress’, by rendering explicit the notion of computational ontology implicit in both articles. Between ‘Don Juan’ and ‘On progress’, there is a notable shift from an extensive approach or the way of the computer to an intensive approach or the way of the camera. That is to say, Flusser’s thinking has diverged and evolved over time, or he is turning the same material towards two related but distinct hermeneutic projects. Praise flips into blame from the one to the other. The logic behind computational ontology is not unlike that behind the composition of technical images or their precursor, namely, Pointillist paintings. The article introduces an additional wrinkle by bridging computational ontology and relational ontology. Conceptually, it culminates in an ontology computed out of relations, each of which in itself is composed of relations, ad infinitum. There is something artistic, aesthetic, sophistical, indeterminate and probabilistic about such an ontology, which is synonymous with the art of autopoiesis that uses relations as raw materials, ‘subjectemes’ or ‘projectemes’. The article ends on a note of reconciling the way of the computer and the way of the camera.

The bridge between the study of human settlements, urban environments and media ecology is not new but often overlooked, yet canonical figures in media ecology have been concerned with the relationship between urbanity and media developments. Urban communication foregrounds communication in the study of urban landscapes and considers the unique patterns and needs of urban dwellers and communities with the speed and scale of growth and the interconnectedness of cities. This forum seeks to underscore the intersections of media ecology and urban communication studies by introducing just a few of the ways in which media ecologists are taking urban explorations.

Striving to reveal the latent, autonomous energies of language, these poems attempt to represent the field of infinite potential out of which all transient forms and content come. The aim is to create liberation via the thrill of having something that cannot ever be said on the tip of one’s tongue.

Review of: Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered, Donald Norman (2024)

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 376 pp.,

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