Abstract: This paper revisits an earlier study of the common ground shared by Alfred Korzybski, founder of general semantics, and Marshall McLuhan, the central figure in media ecology, and makes explicit the use of systems theory to bridge the gap between the two. Following a brief summary of the systems approach and its relationship to the media ecology intellectual tradition, sociolo- gist Niklas Luhmann is identified as an appropriate mediator between Korzybski and McLuhan, for his application of the concept of autopoiesis to the study of society. Korzybski's key term of abstracting is compared to McLuhan's emphasis on medium, and suggests that McLuhan's true concern was with a process of mediating rather than a medium as a thing. Korzybski only dis- cussed abstracting in quantitative terms, i.e., levels or orders of abstracting, but McLuhan's ap- proach suggests the need to distinguish between qualitative differences as well, in the form of the mode of abstracting. his paper revisits an earlier study in which I discussed some of the common ground shared by Alfred Korzybski and Marshall McLuhan, and how each scholar's perspective could be used to enhance the approach of the other (Strate, 2010). In doing so, I relied upon systems theory to bridge the gap between the two scholars, but did not make that third ap- proach explicit, so that it instead served as a hidden ground while I highlighted the shared per- spective of Korzybski and McLuhan. In returning to that discussion, I want to begin with a brief review of the basics of systems theory, noting how it relates to media ecology and general se- mantics. The key concept of a system is a general one that can be applied to any phenomenon, be it physical, chemical, biological, social, psychological, or technological. A system is any entity that is composed of interdependent parts, so that the whole cannot be explained only by examining the different parts; rather, you have to look at how they work together. In this way, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that extra something being the structure, relationship, or interac- tion among the parts, what Buckminster Fuller termed their synergy (see, for example, Fuller & Applewhite, 1975). This something extra that the parts produce when they form a system is said to emerge out of the system, and this quality of emergence is held in contrast to linear cause-and- effect because the interaction of the parts of a system, especially one that is complex and dy- namic, includes random, chaotic factors that make prediction impossible (although bifurcation points may generate an orderly pattern when repeated over time, just as flipping a coin once gen- erates a random result, but when repeated over and over reveals a statistical order). Changes in- troduced to a system therefore tend to be difficult to analyze in terms of causal relationships. For example, in some instances a system can take great damage and still go on functioning, as the interdependence of its parts makes for a robust system capable of a high degree of compensation; and in other instances a very small change can bring down the entire system, as interdependence results a series of indirect effects that may snowball, growing geometrically, especially if the ef-