week 3 : 17 october
communication theory
Highlights From Student Posts[back to week 3]
- Barrie
- I was at first annoyed when I read "Informing Ourselves to Death," and spent a lot of time trying to figure out why. Everything that Postman writes seems true--yes, we are over-informed; yes, we are increasingly isolated; yes, on the whole most of us have lost perspective about what is essential and what is not. Yet he also seems to be trivializing the advantages of time and labor (and money, because both time and labor equal money) that computerization has brought.
- Belle
- There is an old Chinese saying goes that “Only through the
right timing, the right location and the right people can a person
get succeed.” Maybe it exactly talks about the “supervening
necessity.”
- There is an old Chinese saying goes that “Only through the
right timing, the right location and the right people can a person
get succeed.” Maybe it exactly talks about the “supervening
necessity.”
- Chloe
- In this quarter, my research will focus on social network analysis on web log. I’m very interested in Uses and Gratifications theory because it is useful to me.I would like to use this theory to find out why some people are willing to show their emotion and diary to the public. Will they get gratification by doing this?
- Courtney
- Reading Wilson is a confirmation process for me. His approach to communications combines technology, history, individual contributions and linguistics. I think that far too often the study of communications veers too sharply toward public relations, marketing and modern advertising. Those fields, while important to the implementation of targeted goals in communicating with the public, are what interior design and decorating are to architecture and engineering. One is dependent upon a firm foundation of the other.
- Elina
- Students build a sense of community and adopt the synchronist and asynchronist lifestyle the technologies can bring. As students (end users) live in a geographically dispersed environment, time and space to learn and gather information is one of the issues to dicuss. Students' buying habits and decisions for usage of different types of technology are mostly based on 1) convenient access, 2) cost, and 3) funtionality to fit for own communication habits and lifestyles. I propose that University of Washington adopt mobile wirelsss technology advances as part of the education system. I am optimistic this will provide an innovative way to increase learning curve for students, as well as, a positive change for professors teaching higher education.
- Jeanne
- I would first like to make a comment about the Economist article regarding the downfall of the traditional phone. It is clear to me that if a new technology can improve an existing technology that companies providing that technology need to embrace and experiment with the improvements or be left behind. To fight the improvements would be foolish, but even more foolish may be putting TOO MUCH into the new. There needs to be a balance and an incorporation as not to alienate the current clients.
- Kai-Chen
- Neil Postman said pessimistically in the article” INFORMING OURSELVES TO DEATH” that a new technology tends to favor some groups of people and harms other groups. As each coin has two sides, this is another way to explain an event. For example, mobile make people can connect to someone anywhere, but the electromagnetic pulses will harm one’s health; Computer is a breaking-take invention to search information, but it causes users nearsightedness, even a lot of problems. I think it is the unintended consequenses of new technology for Neil Postman.
- Kevin
- Sadly, the best examples of supervening necessities are found in times of war. . . with the focus on winning, the question is how can you inflict maximum hurt on your enemy so you can win...
Ironic, isn't it, that Guttenberg's invention was intended to support the work of the Catholic Church as it brought copies of the Bible for people to read for themselves and, yet, it opened the door for Martin Luther's challenge to the primacy of the Pope and the idea that an individual could have a direct relationship with God sans the intermediary of the priest?
- Sadly, the best examples of supervening necessities are found in times of war. . . with the focus on winning, the question is how can you inflict maximum hurt on your enemy so you can win...
- Kristina
- The uses and gratifications paradigm tries to determine motivations for using media by focusing on what people do with mass media. I can apply this focus of understanding Internet user motivations better to my project by looking to see what ways online news sites have for readers to respond to stories and look at the ways they are used.
- What the history of the telephone also illustrated was that the best idea or prototype will not always be the adopted technology. Winston refers to the inertia that helps the diffusion of a certain technology. It's very difficult for new technologies to compete once an invention has made inroads into society. If people have become used to a certain technology, they need a very compelling reason to change technologies.
- Luke
- Also interesting is the notion that Bell's patent was based off of an undeveloped model : a gamble off of the guarantee that superior technology would inevitably be produced along those lines later. Is the race for technological innovation still following the same trends today?
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Magnus
- This U&G paradigm is yet another fantastical way to say something very simple. What are people using the internet for? Like what are people using the telegraph for? It changes the function and the main reason for a technology to exist. My project this quarter is very tied up with this idea because my inquiry is essentially what are people using search for and how do I optimize it? How did they find the same information in the past?
- Mini
- Another way of saying this is that each cause has more than one effect, including unforeseen effects. For instance, scientists alter the genes of crops and the original idea is to help people to get enough nutrition. These days the effects of genetically-modified foods are still unknown, but this issue has already caused arguments.
- Nancy
- In some ways the article seems naive. "Users of AOL can be a reasonably representative sample of consumer Internet use." Really, in 2004, when it was written? I'd argue that AOL ceased being representative of Internet users by the millenium, at the latest. I've been trying to get my 83-year-old dad to dump AOL for a long time.
- Randa
- Why use internet? (Other than the notion of a huge playground or library or connections to other countries I can't afford to visit?) Illusion of control, unlimited access, instant gratification.
- Rex
- If I didn't have enough reasons to dismiss Neil Postman on philosophical, practical, and moral grounds, today's reading of "Informing Ourselves To Death" only supplies more evidence, and a chance to call him a crazy old coot.
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Stephanie
- For example, Bill Gates vision of a PC being desired in every home did not become a reality until supervening necessity made it so. The same can be seen with the cell phone replacing landline telephones, records changing to tapes and cd or radio’s popularity shift from AM to FM. Every technology lives or dies based on supervening necessity, it is the lifeblood for a new idea to become common phenomena.
- Steve
- It is not farfetched to say that people are easily awed by innovation, specifically technological ones. How many of you have been hooked by the functionality of a new cell phone or the high definition of a television set? Did you ever think to yourself "I wish I had that or I'm going to buy that?"
- Tony (Fu-Yuan)
- So what is the demand? It's something like a puzzle. And what is supervening necessity? That is a long term demand, and quite not the same as fashion. But the prediction is still the main point, and the life of a production depends on whether people really need it. With a whole new technology, additionally we have to persuade people to adopt it. So if you get the right way, you will succeed. If not, you'll fail.
- Vaun
- In chapters two and three of Media, Technology & Society Winston
does a good job of illustrating how much more complex the process of invention
is than we tend to assume. I wasn’t sure where he was going with
all the technical details, but he certainly gave me an impression of a
bumbling, stumbling, confusing process out of which the telephone somehow
managed to emerge.
- In chapters two and three of Media, Technology & Society Winston
does a good job of illustrating how much more complex the process of invention
is than we tend to assume. I wasn’t sure where he was going with
all the technical details, but he certainly gave me an impression of a
bumbling, stumbling, confusing process out of which the telephone somehow
managed to emerge.
- No Blog Link
- Kristina
- Nika