Week 4

While reading "Technologies of the Third Mediamorphosis," by Roger Fidler, I started thinking about how prevalent email as the predominate tool for disseminating information and communicating in an office environment has become. I remember working in the office when information was circulated around an office with a sticky note attached to it that you had to initial to show that you had received the memo and then you passed to the next person. Now, nearly everything is electronic. I have an email inbox full of stuff. I am afraid to delete most emails because I just know that somebody somewhere might deem a deleted email very important and I will be asked my thoughts or opinion of it. I wonder how we ever got along without email.

I found it amusing that when people were shown demonstrations of Bell’s “audio-telegraph” that audiences were filled with dread by the eerie sounds and voices that came out of Bell’s machine. However, I it gave me a better picture of why new inventions can take time to become adopted. I know that VoIP is a technology that, while people may not be afraid of it, can certainly create a sense of uncertainty about how this technology will impact them. Uncertainty with new technologies is still real today.

The Winston readings this week, in parts, really dragged me down. The depth of detail about firing tables (a guide to the ranging of artillery pieces) made me cry “Enough!” While it is certainly interesting to read about the first computers, the acronyms and detail can really slow things down in my opinion. On the other hand, there are some fascinating accounts of the British government’s Code and Cipher School (CG and CS) charged with the challenge of breaking encoded German messages created on the Enigma. A machine called the Bombas (originally constructed by the Poles) was used to reverse Enigma. The effect on the world of this invention no doubt altered history. The supervening social necessity for these machines was driven by war.

Week 3

It was fascinating to read the account of Bell’s battle with the patent for the telephone. It was easy to get lost in the different patents and what they represented. I enjoyed the article and found it to be informative. At first, I was surprised to read nothing regarding the Italian inventor Antonio Meucci. The US House of Representatives recognized Meucci in House Resolution 269 dated June 11, 2002 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-in/bdquery/z?d107:HE00269:@@@L&summ2=m&) as the inventor of the telephone. I realize that the book was written before the recognition but I’m thinking that surely Winston had at least heard of him. On second thought though, I began to realize how difficult it could be to research the history of an invention. There were patents filed for a device that didn’t even exist. Would one necessarily know that, for example, a caveat that didn’t specifically mention a device that was being researched, would it be recognized? Maybe not.

As far as to the importance of supervening necessity, the public basically decides what it deems important and necessary. Does the prototype fill a need? If so, then the prototype becomes fully realized. However, a prototype’s full value may not always be recognized initially not only by the public but also by the inventor. An initial rejection of a prototype might later yield a vastly improved and needed invention. This reminds me of cause and effect.

I think another example of supervening necessity could be VOIP. Is there a real demand for it right now? It is new technology that could one day replace the telephone that we have grown to know and love. It is always a bit difficult to give up something that works well for an unknown item. I’m sure as the technology matures new uses will be discovered that will bring about broader acceptance.


I wonder if Neil Postman has given any thought to how his speech “Informing Ourselves To Death” might be disseminated? Could he have known that it would be accessible in a digital format? Is he opposed to it being widely available? It was ironic to me to be reading his speech on a pc connected to the internet. He states that the computer will not make your life better - “it is nonsense.” I find it terrific that I can read his speech from the comfort of my home without having to go anywhere to read it. While I certainly don’t believe that the computer is the end-all answer to the claims of the heralds, it has certainly been a useful tool for me. I have bettered myself through study of all manner of items related to religious, political, and education matters. I know of a school system that has replaced their video and movie lending library containing content of all curricular subject areas including science, social studies, math, technology, language arts, etc… and replaced it with streaming video via the internet and is now available to all educators in that school district for classroom and small group presentations at the push of a button. “We don’t know what information is relevant and what information is irrelevant to our lives.” That can be a true statement but I am willing to learn to sift through the information to find the meaningful bits that are useful and helpful to me. I wonder if he would like knowing that his speech has now become a part of all the digital information floating around and cluttering up our lives out there?


My favorite invention, the record, started out on wax paper and came about as a result of work to create the telephone. It’s always fun to find that a specific invention arrived as a result of something else. Caruso had the first million-selling disc in 1904 seems incredible. Growing up I remember being so fascinated and captivated by vinyl. The sounds and emotions that could come from such a bland looking, flat piece of wax still amaze me. Today record companies have predominately moved away from vinyl pressings and I am saddened for it. Vinyl records came wrapped in large album covers. These covers could be works of art that might suggest a hint of the wonders and joy inside.

Personalized Media

It is interesting to have read the article, “Social Aspects of Media Technologies,” from Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, 1994 from this vantage point in time to see what has happened since this article was published. Traditional mass delivery of media programming has evolved even further into a more focused and segmented consumer demand. Technology such as “collaborative filtering” has become a “research” tool for learning and recommending products based on social and personal choices. Amazon.com uses this extensively on their web site. Personalized media is the new model. In particular, broadcasting is gradually becoming an industry being led by the consumer. The responsibility to deliver content in this new model will require new ways of thinking about programming. There will be a need for people in the digital media field to react quickly and effectively to keep up with the constantly changing market. Creative solutions will be needed for programming and increasing my familiarity with these issues will equip me with a solid foundation to help direct and contribute to the impact of technology on society.

Dancing Elephants

The phrase “Watching the elephants dance” from The Economist perfectly illustrates my observations of the telecommunications industry over the last several years. Funny, I worked in this industry for 4 years and never heard the term “disruptive technology”. Maybe that’s why the company I worked for is being taken over. Oh sure, I know that the telecoms overbuilt their capacity based on hopes regarding the dot.com era (or dot.com minute to be more precise) and this really affected the company’s financial strength, but I feel that a lack of vision has really hurt them too. The company I used to work for was one that, while trying to adopt new technologies, would attempt to implement the new technologies using models that have existed for over 100 years. There seemed to be an understanding about the benefits that a new technology (such as VOIP) could bring but there was never an analysis of how best to implement the technology with newer models that were more consistent to the rapidly changing world that the internet has created.

In my opinion, a model must be flexible and able to adapt and change on the fly, otherwise you will be left behind. I can’t imagine that there was any talk in my company of providing VOIP for nothing such as is the case with email. Why? I remember the very first business class I took at school, the first words out of my instructor’s mouth were “If you don’t learn anything from this class, then remember this, a company is in business for one thing – to make money. It drives everything that a company does.” True enough in a for-profit company. I believe, again just my opinion, that the company was so fixated on the bottom line and in the old way of doing things, that looking at how they could benefit from VOIP, for example by providing add-on services, that they weren’t looking down the road as to how VOIP might be used to bring the traditional telecom down. Huge corporations can get so bogged down in bureaucracy and be slower than any heavy plant - eating mammal to move on new technology when it first appears. As a result, they will most certainly become like those other extinct creatures that once dominated things too but were unable to change when the circumstances demanded.