Various scholars have looked to media ecology theory through different lenses to better understand this theory in the 21st century. While Sternberg applied the yin/yang metaphor to make sense of the theory, Julia Hildebrand and John Dimmick et al. create a new languages of modality. As such, contributing to a new rhetoric to contextualize media ecology in the age of the internet, social media, and advances in technologies. Hildebrand uses the conceptualization of 'mediated mobilities' to illustrate a connection between media ecology and mobilities research, ultimately making a case for a "modal medium theory". She looks into the articles of Emily Keightley and Anna Reading, and Lance Strate as a basis for her case. In 1999, Lance Strate states media ecology theory is "grammar and rhetoric, semiotics and systems theory, the history and the philosophy of technology". Hildebrand explains that Strate's concept of media ecology is not limited to the study of information and communication technology but technology, in general. Technology is therefore implying materialities and mobilities that is put into relation with media ecology. As Hildebrand states, "nvironments are created and shaped by different media and modes and the physical, virtual, and mental processes and travels they generate". Much like media ecology, mobilities research talk about a "flow" that shapes the environment, creating a contact zones. Dimmick furthers this explanation with the concept of interstices as the intersection of communication environments and issues of mobility. He quotes two scholars, Hemment and Caronia, to contextualize his new word. Hemment argues that mobile technologies create a place out of space and time, a kind of "nonspace" or "nonplace" considering they are independent from the variables of space and time. Caronia notes that such technologies extend media to creating empty space and places.