保罗·莱文森的媒介进化理论具有重要的价值。它是北美媒介环境学理论谱系的两极之一,鼓吹乐观主义的软媒介决定论,旗帜鲜明地与尼尔·波兹曼等人的悲观主义彻底决裂;它在网络数字媒介时代对正确处理和认识媒介与人类之间的关系也具有重要的理论意义和现实指导意义。媒介进化理论的不足:其一,坚持以人为中心的媒介立场不彻底,摇摆在“媒介”与“人”两个中心之间;其二,理论的某些结论过于武断,这与他不注重实证而强调直觉直观的研究方法有关。 Paul Levinson’s theory of media evolution is of great value. It is one of the two poles of the pedigree of media environmental theory in North America. It advocates optimism in soft media determinism and has a clear resolution of the pessimism of Neil Bozeman et al. It resolves correctly in the era of online digital media The relationship between media and human beings also has important theoretical and practical significance. The inadequacies of the theory of media evolution are as follows: First, the persistence of the human-centered media position is not complete, swaying between the two centers of “media” and “people”; secondly, some conclusions of the theory are too arbitrary; He does not focus on empirical evidence and emphasis on intuition and intuitive research methods.