#15 Technological change is ecological, not additive
Window #15 starts deals with the mistake we keep repeating every time a new medium arrives.
One of the most common mistakes we make when a new medium enters the field is to make the wrong assumptions. When television arrived, many assumed radio would disappear. When Facebook appeared, people made the same prediction about email. Over and over again, we expect new media to replace the old ones, rather than noticing how they quietly change what those media are used for.
Neil Postman warned us against this way of thinking. Technological change is not additive. It is ecological, he said. When a new medium arrives, it does not simply add something new. It changes everything that already exists. Radio did not disappear when television arrived. It changed. Before television, radio demanded attention. After television, radio became something else. We started listening while ironing, while driving, while cooking. Radio turned into a companion medium.
This is why the old Swedish expression “hoppa på IT-tåget” (”hop on the IT train”) was always misleading. As if technology were something you either boarded at exactly the right moment or missed forever. According to Postman’s logic, that is not how technological change works. You can step in later. You can catch up. What you cannot do is enter an unchanged environment. When you arrive, the media landscape has already reorganised itself, and you have to learn how it works now.
We see the same misunderstanding about the Arab Spring, which is often described as a Twitter revolution. That story is too neat. Twitter mattered, yes. But radio mattered too. Information spread through broadcast radio, through local stations, through phones, and through social media. No single medium did the work. The ecology did.
Postman’s point is uncomfortable because it removes the illusion of control. You cannot choose one medium without affecting the others. You cannot introduce a technology without reshaping habits, roles, and relationships that were already there.
