This work comes from a forthcoming poetry collection called Rolling Windows (Roof Books, 2026) concerned with media archaeology and ecology, migration and translation. ‘Unexpectedly Human’ endeavours to render capitalism’s abstract processes into glimmers of visibility in the shifting landscape of logistics and supply chain management, converging the co-opting of natural resources for the purchase of technology with the outsourcing of intimacy in network capitalism, the desire to capture and contain with the entropy of memory, a shift signalled in the poem’s formal movement from verse to prose. ‘L’eclisse’ uses the tempo of cinema as its organizing structure of 24 frames, signalling itself as a piecemeal and fragmentary remake of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1962 film crosscut with the found footage of personal and familial pasts. In mobilizing the aesthetic contours and staging of video to illuminate aspects of craft rooted in a multimedia and multilingual poetics and shaped by migration and dislocation, my hope is that ‘L’eclisse’ also conveys a broader conceptualization about how diasporic writers may have to move between and across modes in order to tell parts of a larger story in different ways, alternating frames, languages and lenses.
This article compares the representations of technology in the 2023 film Oppenheimer and the 1999 play Copenhagen – both of which deal with questions about nuclear technology and weaponry during the Second World War. Oppenheimer presents what I call a view from beyond. Tracing Oppenheimer’s work through his own eyes, this film depicts him as a dedicated scientist who comes to see the evils of nuclear weapons. This framing is enhanced by the contrast the film draws between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss – a government official the film depicts as pushing for the further development of nuclear technology and in opposition to Oppenheimer. Building this opposition and telling its story from Oppenheimer’s first-person perspective, Oppenheimer offers a singular vision that redeems Oppenheimer as a character even as it casts Strauss as a scapegoat for America’s use of nuclear weapons. In contrast, Copenhagen offers what I call a view from between. As it dramatizes a historic meeting between Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr and Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, the play allows each character their own unique vision and memory. Copenhagen narrates this story multiple times and from different perspectives, refusing a definitive story regarding what transpired. In telling the story as it does, Copenhagen problematizes and denaturalizes our relationships to nuclear technology in ways that are not possible with Oppenheimer ’s more singular perspective. I ultimately work to stress how a view from between can help create a more critical engagement with a variety of technologies.
In western society, tattoos are increasingly understood as a rational and therapeutic response to grief and loss. The act of permanently marking the body with a tribute to the departed allows the individual to externalize their emotions, making the abstract experience of loss more concrete and manageable. This notion is reflected in the portrayal of memorial tattoos in the first American network television series dedicated to tattoos, Miami Ink , which showcases personal stories of grief, healing and transformation via tattoos. Through these personal narratives, viewers witness how a memorial tattoo can provide comfort, closure and a sense of continued connection with the deceased, guiding the grief process towards acceptance. From elaborate life-like portrait tattoos, to mixing human cremated ashes with tattoo ink, memorial tattoos are continually viewed as a rational part of the grieving process. The decision of getting a memorial tattoo is said to bring about a healing of unresolved grief. Narrative Paradigm Theory is utilized to explore these memorial tattoo narratives to evaluate their potential persuasiveness.
This article explains a class assignment (with written and spoken components) for smaller-sized undergraduate or graduate-level courses. The assignment teaches about the use, strengths and weaknesses of AI, while sharing insights into humanity and social interaction from Balthasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom (a book available free online – or other texts might be substituted). Students select aphorisms from Gracián’s 300-aphorism collection, translate these with the help of AI and share the originals, translations and their thoughts (about the advice and the translations) in gently guided panel presentations. This assignment merges nuanced discussion of the kinds of ‘worldly wisdom’ students select, with concrete discussion of artistic, practical, cognitive and ethical implications of AI use.
This essay explores how contemporary recommendation algorithms and AI, operating across digital media platforms, reflect ancient dramaturgical principles codified in Bharata Muni’s Natyashastra . By situating Bollywood within the tradition of media ecology theorists like McLuhan and Nardi and O’Day, the essay argues that digital systems inherit the logic of rasa – structured emotional experiences – through data-driven curation and pattern recognition. Drawing on examples from classical performance and virtual reality installations, the analysis illuminates how determinants, expressive responses and transient emotions in Natyashastra foreshadow today’s algorithmic shaping of affect. A speculative dialogue between Bharata Muni and a machine learning engineer probes the ethical, communal and design implications for the future of media ecologies, insisting that true innovation lies in conscious adaptation of ancient codes for human flourishing in digital environments.
Over the past three years, secondary teachers have wrestled with what to do with Large Language Models (LLMs) powered by artificial intelligence (AI). LLMs are rightly understood as transformational technologies and thus it is not surprising that teachers have been asked to find ways to leverage their capabilities for the benefit of students. Latent in these requests is a belief that if teachers can simply figure out how to integrate AI into their classrooms, then all the perceived benefits of this impressive technology will flow to students. This emphasis on how to integrate AI has far outstripped any discussion of whether AI should be integrated at all. Therefore, this paper intends to address if AI in the form of LLMs is an appropriate tool for students to use in a secondary classroom. Given the fact that LLMs are being used as pieces of educational technology, this paper will use the Media Ecology and educational theories of Neil Postman to sift what is known about LLMs today to answer the question of appropriateness. Postman both offers insights on how to make sense of the technology we use and that we are used by while also offering a vision of what education is ultimately for, which establishes a clear position from which appropriateness can be evaluated. If this paper is successful, it will give its readers an opportunity to pause and set aside the pressure of deciding how AI is to be employed so that they can ask the more fundamental question, ‘Is AI use by students critical to meet the goals of education?’.
Review of: Generative Knowledge: Think, Learn, Create with AI , Paolo Granata (2025) Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 288 pp., ISBN 978-1-394-36300-1, p/bk, USD 27.95 ISBN 978-1-39436-301-8, e-book, USD 22.00
This probe explores the experience of writing alongside ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature and asks what becomes of authorship, agency and ethical responsibility when scholarly work is performed through negotiations between humans and AI systems. Drawing on media ecology and actor-network theory (ANT), the probe theorizes advanced large language models as invocational actors : non-human entities summoned through prompts that appear to undertake autonomous intellectual labour. The argument traces the concept of translation across three domains – machine translation in AI research, McLuhan’s media-ecological understanding of translation as perceptual transformation and ANT’s account of translation as the enrolment and transformation of actors within networks. Using Deep Research as a case study, the probe examines how translation gives way to the appearance of agency, unsettling established norms of scholarly authorship and intellectual labour. Rather than offering a definitive position for or against AI-assisted research, the probe concludes by proposing provisional heuristics for ethical knowledge production that resist full delegation while acknowledging the long history of non-human participation in scholarly work.
This editorial celebrates the first issue of the twenty-fifth volume of Explorations in Media Ecology , recalling notable articles in the early issues of the journal.
This editorial considers the origins of Explorations in Media Ecology ( EME ) and the function of a journal in an academic association, and reflects on the contents and contributions of the present issue.
When humans develop new technologies, we come up with metaphors to make sense of what we’ve created. These metaphors compare new technologies to things that are more familiar. Over time, some of these metaphors gain popularity. Dominant metaphors are not monolithic, but they do significantly affect feelings, thoughts and actions; and they are the basis of our individual and shared conceptual systems. In an effort to spell out potential consequences, this article examines, in detail, common metaphors of AI (large language models and other kinds of image-generating, and audio-generating AI). Then it offers two more metaphors ‘to grow on’ – one for AI in the context of education, the other for those who own, wield and/or benefit from generative AI.
Review of: Wisdom Weavers: The Lives and Thought of Harold Innis and Marshall Mcluhan , Tom Cooper (2025) Old Saybrook, CT: Connected Editions, 658 pp., ISBN 978-1-56178-092-1, h/bk, USD 95
This article provides a sampling of the contributions of foundational media ecology scholars to our understanding of urban communication. Such scholars include Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford and Walter Benjamin.
McLuhan advocated for citizens to engage with their physical surroundings and with others in community and to become more involved in decision-making about media availability and restrictions; his position remains pertinent with the continuing need for increased citizen engagement and participation in urban life. Both as individuals and collectively, we can cultivate awareness of and assert some control over our relationship with media and technology, toning down the automatic operations of smart city logics, especially those that impose systemic regulations. Opportunities to engage with urban place are increased if reshaping and repurposing the urban environment becomes a common project – so that we are not simply users of urban space defined for us by actors in government and corporate positions but co-producers of open cities.
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.
In today’s technology-driven society, there is a growing need to develop effective methods for teaching history, media literacy, biblical literacy and art history. To illustrate this, the author analyses the artwork in the dome at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The author suggests that combining art and text – for example, scriptural art and scriptural texts – can be a powerful tool for developing an understanding of history, literature and the Bible. Through studying Biblical art and scripture, educators can support the development of the mental processes of children and youth. Integrating narrative text with narrative art can significantly improve media education and offer a framework for exploring different symbolic forms and their meanings. The author concludes by identifying three media ecology principles that can be used to evaluate narrative art and narrative text.
Review of: Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered, Donald Norman (2024) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 376 pp., ISBN 978-0-26204-795-1, h/bk, USD 3.89 ISBN 978-0-26254-830-4, p/bk, USB 20.60 ISBN 978-0-26237-384-5, e-book, USD 18.99
This editorial welcomes new members to the editorial staff of Explorations in Media Ecology and pays tribute to the late scholar Gary Gumpert.
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.
Utilizing the scholarship of Marshall McLuhan and Walter J. Ong, this work explores the biases and effects of unmediated and mediated communication. Through the analysis, the thesis emerges that unmediated, or in-person, communication fosters social unity, while mediated forms provide connectivity, they potentially thwart the depth of human relations afforded by unmediated communication, creating autonomy. The final section piers into the future of mediation through the philosophical and quasi-religious movement of transhumanism. In all, the analysis takes a philosophical look into the essence of communication by considering its evolution from unmediated to mediated forms and the effect on the self and social relations.
