摘要：Ecological ethics barely figures into the way media and communication researchers think about
media technology. By ecological ethics, we mean the subset of ethics concerned with ¡°how human beings
ought to behave in relation to non-human nature¡± (Curry, 2006, p. 47). The environmental impact of
electronic waste (e-waste) is just now starting to gain traction in media and communication studies
(Sterne, 2007; Parks, 2007; Ellis, 2007, pp. 217-219; Maxwell & Miller, in press; Miller, 2007b). Here the
ethical response focuses on the environmental (including human-bodily) harms associated with disposal,
dismantling, and recycling of media technologies. However piecemeal, this interest in e-waste is a salutary
advance toward an eco-ethics in media studies; it is one among many environmental issues that pertains
to the study of media technologies. The essay aims to alert media and communication scholars and
students to the ecological context of the technologies that the field has expertly studied during its halfcentury
existence.
