Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Andrew Chrystall McLuhan’s (1964) reflection on the ‘science fiction’ of William S. Burroughs critiques eco-discourses that ignore human-made environments – media and technology – and present simplistic, romantic ideas of unmediated, wild nature as the environment. According to McLuhan: (1) electronic information systems are nature and/or live environments in the full organic sense; (2) ‘nature’, as figure, needs to be discussed historically and in view of how it has been swallowed, digested and made the content of successive media environments; (3) artistic and literary eco-utopias and dystopias are reactionary expressions of our new natures – when a technology is new it yields utopias and, when the full consequences of a new technology are manifest, dystopias and/or millennial visions catastrophe appear strongly. This paper seeks to develop McLuhan’s reflections and bring them into the orbit of our new nature, contemporary eco-criticism(s), and our situation where visions of catastrophe and utopia co-exist simultaneously. Andrew Chrystall is a lecturer in the School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing at Massey University. His work unfolds from the interdisciplinary approach of McLuhan, the Toronto School of Communication and Media Ecology.
