The Influence Of Technological Progress On Media Ecology

This paper involves interdisciplinary courses such as scientific philosophy,communication, and ecology. Media ecology is an interdiscipline subject ofcommunication and ecology. The study of media ecology dates back to1980s in NorthAmerica, while in China it begins from21stcentury with quite a few research results.Based upon the study of media ecology, this paper applies correlation theory ofscientific philosophy to dialectically analyze the development of modern technology,especially the influence and maintainance of the digitization on media ecologysystem.In media ecology, producers, media, and audience establish a unique ecologicalsystem. The producer transmits the information and the significance of the resultingflow to the audience through the media, so as to achieve an orderly state of evolutionprocess.There are many environmental factors which influence the media ecology system,such as policy, market, technology. Through the static structural analysis of the mediaecology system in terms of its communication factors and environmental elements,and the dynamic evolution analysis of the media development, it is observed that thetechnology is the most active factor, which is decisive. Every progress of thetechnology will bring media revolution, especially the digital technology, which notonly natures the new media, reforms the old media, fuses all the media, but alsochanges the food chain and food web of the media ecology system, thus influences themedia ecology system. However, technology is a double-edged sword. Digitalizationmakes the media industry prosper, but the problem has followed such as the decline ofthe media credibility, huge information garbage, the abuse of press freedom, thespread of the audience technical hedonism and so forth. Besides, the food chain andfood web of the media arises the possibility of inflation and obstruction., the energyand the quantity appear to be an inverted pyramid form. Furthermore, the balance ofthe media ecology system is suffering from sever damage. All of these influence theecosystem of human culture and the nature.Based on the system theory, this paper first explains the structure of the mediaecology system, and explores the relationship between the technology and the culturethrough the evolution of the technical progress and the media ecology system. Andthen with a critical perspective, the paper analyzes the reasons of damage on mediaecology, so as to look forward to the correct treatment of the progress anddevelopment of the technology.