Environments

Environments – plural. Many of them. And none of them is the same as what many "environmentalists" mean by the word. When we use it, "environment" corresponds to the ensemble of effects formally caused by technological paradigms. Marshall McLuhan famously employed "media" and "medium" in his early works: "Understanding Media" (1964) and "The Medium is the Massage" (1967). But he later switched to use "environment" and "ecology" – perhaps because he found this framework better for him to get across his points to a late-60s audience.

When we use it, "environment" corresponds to the ensemble of effects formally caused by technological paradigms​.

We often further qualify "environment" by prefixing it with "psycho-technological." By this we use "environment" to describe the wide range of effects caused by paradigmatic media forms on the human psyche. So, in this sense, "paradigms" (formal causes) cause "environments" (formal effects) that then shape our psychology. Paradigms – of which there are only a few (agreeing here with how Kuhn seems to have meant his usage) – formally cause many different environments. Yes, perhaps all this is too idiosyncratic and we may need to further consider the terminology involved.

The paradigms we discuss include wide-ranging "epochs" like Oral, Scribal, Print, Electric and Digital. These, in turn, generate many environments – following the contours of the technological as well as various cultural and geographic dynamics. The Electric Paradigm, for instance, can be described in terms of distinct Telegraph, Radio, and Television environments (at least), and these will express themselves differently in the West and the East.