History of "Old" Technologies

All of these articles struggle with the popular notion that technologies have changed the way the society functions. Each author provides their examples of how technologies may be deterministic or if there are different factors to the idea.

Carey's writings focus on the emergence of the telegraph and how its introduction was the first step in developing new technologies. The telegraph changed people's way of thinking about what could be done with technology and communication. Carey argues that people could not go on living the way they used to, that it demanded, "a new body of law, economic theory, political arrangements, management techniques, organizational structure, and scientific rationales...to justify and make effective the development..." What is meant by that is it needs to be "naturalized" as Carey puts it for society to accept and use the technology. Once the telegraph was accepted, it led to things like bringing markets together, now that they could easily communicate, it changed the way people thought about time and space, and ultimately it changed how people communicated.

Covert's article on the radio was a fascinating look into how society reacted to these new technologies with a sense of fear for what they did not know. Radio seemed like something completely foreign and something that possessed supernatural powers. I think Covert's article brought up three very strong points dealing with how radio, and later new technologies, changed how people interacted. The first point that was made was that radio offered was the fear that there was a "leakage of signals" to "unauthorized persons", where people started to become afraid of these technologies as a breach of privacy. The amount of privacy invasion has become even greater since the introduction of the radio. Another point that was brought up in the article was this idea that we are scheduling our time around the new technology. Covert uses the example of how a newspaper can be read at your convenience, but a radio program has a scheduled time where if you wish to hear it, you have to be present at that time. It is because of this people are somehow limiting the activity they are capable of since they have to adhere to what the radio producers schedule. The last point is echoed in the other work, but it is the idea that people are listening to the radio, for the most part, alone. The radio gives the listener the sense they are part of a crowd or an audience, but they are actually in their living room listening to a box. Covert says, "Radio presented a new reality which transcended both- the immediate experience of remote person or even, an experience in company with millions of others, yet strangely separate."

Spigel's article emphasizes the points made by the other two authors, but uses the example of television and how it was embraced by society. Spigel begins by stating some statements about television's impact and attempts to dismiss what these try to prove. Again the idea of making the audience of the technology into a mass audience that are isolated is brought up as a way that these technologies sanction social relations among persons. For Spigel, there is little doubt that television has made a significant impact on society and the way we acquire our media.

I think the Hillis article wraps the subject up nicely with the idea that technology might in fact just "mediate" interaction instead of determining or influencing our actions. The importance is the distinction between media interactive processes or communications and tools. Looking at a television as a tool that humans use to manipulate to communicate to others would be adept than saying television or radio is something that "disrupts or reconfigures whatever we take to be 'essentially' human." Hillis also suggests that determinisms are limited because they are too firmly grounded in the idea of cause and effect where they dismiss the possibility of other factors. This argument is like other media critics who disagree that people are simply passive consumers, Hillis argues that "humans creatively engage with the products of their own making in complex ways..." which social construction and technological determinism misses.