There’s no doubt that the age we live in today is a time of technology and all things digital. Social media, email, texting, etc. are all things that are embedded into our everyday lives. These things, while extremely handy, are changing the environment we live in drastically. My grandmother, who does not know how to text, prefers to make phone calls. If you text her, there’s a 99% chance that she will not see it or ever respond to it. Her understand of text messaging is that it is much more inconvenient, can be ambiguous, and she doesn’t feel as though she can communicate what she wants to say. Living in the world we live in now,  the younger generation would most likely strongly disagree, believing that it is quicker, more convenient, and can even allow you to say more than you may on the phone or in person because you can in a sense hide behind the phone. Both of these different beliefs can be related to media ecology and the way McLuhan discusses it within the chapter.

Marshall McLuhan discusses his theory of Media Ecology. He defines this as “the study of different personal and social environments created by the use of different communication technologies.” (317) Going along with this, McLuhan also bases this theory on the idea that “the media is the message.” (316) By saying this McLuhan wants us to understand that “media-regardless of content reshape human experience and exert far more change in our world than the sum total of messages they contain.” (317) Essentially, this theory is based on the idea that it is not as much what you hear, as how you hear it. The way messages are communicated and presented to us through technology are important as McLuhan believes that the media is the message, as stated before. Different people can understand these messages from media in different ways. McLuhan says that “different personal and social environments created by the use of different communication technologies.” (317)

As we read through McLuhan’s idea of media ecology, I thought immediately how my grandma would interpret messages different than I do based on different media bases that the message may be sent. Her environment is much different than mine. I am surrounded and engulfed in technology based messages, while that is not what she has always been surrounded by.  The way in which I communicate her is essential to the message, because one way will not resonate or even get to her for her to see or hear. The idea of the media being the message I see as especially prevalent between generations and the human experience for each person. I believe McLuhan was spot on when he goes through each “generation” that we have been through in regards to mediums and how we have communicated with each other. I have to be mindful with my grandma when I communicate with her, knowing that her preferred media is different than mine. To assure that we are on the same page, I can relate back to Media Ecology.