IMD 450 History of Communication Media

Week 4 Discussion Questions

Textbook: The Soft Edge: a natural history and future of the information revolution

Please staple this cover sheet to your printed and numbered set of answers. Please answer the questions as clearly and thoughtfully as possible. Use the textbook and outside sources as necessary to complete the following questions.

Chapter 5: Telegraphy

1. What are telegraphy's strengths as a medium? How do these compare to the then existing media forms?
   Gave humans to send information over vast distances at light almost light speed where mail was the only other means of distance communication which would take several months to do so.
2. What are some of the reasons that telegraphy was so distrusted? 

I think it was due to people not really believing in the technology itself. It was very foreign and almost magic to most so they stuck to what they know rather than going with the new technology.

1. Levinson discusses the introduction of “noise” into our various systems media forms. Explain what he means by “noise” in the system and discuss some examples of media systems and the way “noise” is introduced. 

I believe Levinson was talking about how humans when they pass down information it gets distorted a little bit more each time its repeated . Also their is a loss of information when sending signals over distances using wires creating  what levinson would also might call noise.The final message would always be slightly different than the original message.

1. What roles did the telegraph play in increasing more immediate/instantaneous public awareness of events around the world? How did the press evolve with the use of the telegraph? 

I believe it is like any new technology today that might come up. We do not trust it at first but over time we grow to like it and usually mold it more to our liking so better to fit our life-style. It eventually became the mean of communication and made the press what it apparently is today, allowing them to send news on the fly when the news arrives rather than getting the news out to everyone months after it already happened.

Chapter 6: Telephone

1. In your own words, Explain and describe Levinson's term “anthropotropic” 

  Levinson’s term anthropotropic is human’s natural tendency to break communicative barriers, and then try to bring them back to their primitive state before the invention of the technology.

1. Why hasn't video phone taken off ? What is Levinson's stance on the video phone? Would/do you use a video phone? Explain your answers fully. 

Because their was really no demand for that kind of technology and everyone was perfectly content with just using the phonograph. Levinson believes that it is offering no alternative to the already existing technology, which is why there is no demand. Its like the FaceTime for the iPhone where yeah it sounds like a really great idea, but in the real word most people don't use it.

1. What is the telephone's main strengths over any other existing forms of media? What power does the telephone have over people? 

It allows us to stay connected over vast distances and share info and opinions at anytime we may choose. The telephone has huge control over people for ex. when ever their is a phone ringing we automatically know someone is trying to get               in- touch of us and we almost always pick it up.When the phone beckons we come running.

1. Explain what Levinson means by “remedial media.” Give an example of a remedial media that was developed recently in communication media. 

Remedial technology is what changes our world and has brought us some of the greatest technologies we have. Remedial technology to me means taking an existing good technology and making it slightly better or adding another technology onto it based on the original technology. So if this makes since allot of our current technologies we have would not exist like a tv remote control wouldn't exist if it weren't for the TV existing in the first place.

1. Levinson describes how the telephone promotes a level of intrusion beyond other media. Does this still hold true? In what ways has telephone technology been adapted since Levinson wrote this to reduce or increase this intrusion? 

The telephone is most definitely still an intrusion beyond other media. Phones today act as small pocket computers to connect us to all our other devices. Even the internet is tied to our phones allowing us to hold all of humans knowledge at our finger tips or in this case our pockets.