ABSTRACT
In the context of an evolutionary framework, emergence is more a process than a characteristic of media. The development of a new science of ecology in the 1930s and system theory in the 1950s would lead to a revaluation of the idea of emergence. The emergence of a new medium can be assimilated to the process of configuration of a new network of relationships and interactions between actors. Probably the two most studied media emergence processes have been the invention of the printing press in the 15th century and the appearance of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. If the research on the origins of the World Wide Web has been very active in identifying human and institutional actors, the information is more limited when it comes to surveying technological and textual actors.
