A
few themes from Carey (in the book and elsewhere) …
| Technology
is at the center of culture. Technology embodies, realizes and
expresses both the meanings and practices of our lives. |
| In
particular, technology is central to the American creed. Our national
story is embedded in the history of technology. |
| Technology
works as both a symbol OF reality (it represents how the world
works) and a symbol FOR reality (it shapes and creates
that reality, too). |
Time
and space are social phenomena. Modern communication technologies
contain a spatial bias: They erase geographical barriers and
boundaries. Oral communication connects people over time.
|
| The
future (which, by definition, is never the present) is an enormously
powerful
social force. |
The
future serves many social functions. It is
1) Cause for the
revitalization of optimism.
2) Fulfillment of a particular ideology
or idealized goal.
3)
A participation ritual. |
| Technology
(our vehicle to a better future) is outside history and politics.
Even though it has never “saved” us before, this time, it will. |
|
Marvin emphasizes
that very
technology was new once. Each time,
we hope the new tool will:
| Get
us information faster. |
| Bring
us closer together. (Or at least bring others closer to us.) |
| Make
our society more open. |
Make
us better democratic citizens.
|
But at the
same time, we fear it will:
| Degrade
our morals and those of "vulnerable" members of our society, especially
children and women. |
| Make
us overly dependent on “experts.” |
Drive
us further apart.
|
|
Four
questions from McLuhan (via Levinson) can help us assess a medium and
its impact:
| 1. What does the medium enhance
or amplify in the culture? |
| 2. What does it make obsolete or
push out of a position of prominence? |
| 3. What does it retrieve from the
past? |
| 4.
What does the medium “reverse
into” when it reaches the limits
of its potential? |
|
In
"The Technology and the Society," Williams asks
what it means when we say technology (for
instance, television) has “brought
about” a new society or phase of history. We need to consider ...
| Cause
and effect: Two streams of thought are technological determinism
(progress is the history of inventions) and symptomatic technology
(tech
is
a byproduct
of change). |
| Social
history of technology itself: Social needs existed, and technologies
to address those needs were envisioned, then later
created. |
| Social
history of the uses of technology: Broadcast television, for instance,
relies on central transmitters and individual (primarily domestic)
receivers, which shaped its post-war use and subsequent content
development. |
|
Vannevar
Bush and his “memex” offer
an early take on a need that, arguably, the Web would fulfill half a
century later.
What we
really need, Bush said in 1945, is a machine that mimics and thus facilitates
human thought. Our thought is not sequential
(or
linear,
like an index) but associative (or non-linear). Such
a machine would help us follow a “web of
trails” through related items.
His was
the first working definition of a personal, multi-tasking, networked
computer – and
of the flexible, fluid system that would eventually become the World Wide Web. |