Neil Postman's Ecological Change

“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive.  It is ecological.  I mean ‘ecological’ in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists.  One significant change generates total change.  If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none.  This is how ecology of media works as well.  A new technology does not add or subtract something.  It changes everything.”

-- Neil Postman from Technopoly

The world is not linear. We often explore and analyze the world as if it were, but that is just an approach that makes it easier to understand. We think in linear ways; however, the world is more complex than that.

The principle of ceteris paribus, or ‘other things being equal,’ is behind most (if not all) formulas and theories we use to explain the world in the sciences, social sciences and even the humanities. We isolate two variables and look at the relation between them, forgetting that they are not isolated at all. What this forgets is that in any living system, things do not remain the same when other things around them change. In other words: when one variable changes, all other things are not equal. Things—a lot of things— adjust, react, counteract, etc.

Back in college I wrote in one of my journals that when we dissect things we distort them. The organs of an animal are not the same shape and size when they are taken out and laid on a lab table. They are not functioning either. As soon as we cut the skin, we distort. I shared that thought with a few friends, and it didn’t seem to impress anyone. I wasn’t very familiar with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle at that point or Schroder’s cat. I couldn’t relate it to physical science; I think that made a difference. I felt my insight was dead on arrival.

Later, I talked about things in terms of weight and balance, especially changes in tradition and society. When one thing moves or changes, other things have to adapt by either moving their weight or changing their weight: their influence or importance. When people are given more freedom, when the government relinquishes some of its power, people need to take up more responsibility. Freedom is not a pure positive, it needs a counter balance to maintain order.

For example, the liberation of Iraq and Libya from dictatorships. With the freedom that the people gained they needed to be tolerant and cooperate with one another. In both cases, they did not take up those responsibilities and the groups and factions in the country fought with each other plunging the country into chaos. Freedom did not result in progress or the betterment of society.

A little over a year ago when I read Postman’s book Technopoly, the quote above hit a chord with me. It is not just dissection that causes distortion; it is not just Heisenberg’s observer that disturbs the thing he/she is observing; it is not just about weight and balance. It is also not just ecological change, but that is a very accessible way to talk about it. When one thing changes, everything must compensate. That is why no change, however minor it may seem on the face of things, can be taken for granted. Change is change, and the effects of that change cannot be know fully until the system as a whole has adjusted itself.