What stood out to me from our discussion on Mark Poster's theories regarding our postmodern virtualities, was just how unprepared as a people we were for it. After class I was thinking of Dr. Cumming's point about how we create things and then come up with rules and ways to monitor/censor later on. I wonder if sometimes we are too late. You think of how early some kids get on screens now and wonder about our generation that had it much later in our childhood yet no one was all that concerned about what we were doing on them. Children are discovering these virtual realities younger than they ever have before and I wondered if we have prepared for this or we'll be trying to pick up the pieces in a few years, after the fact.
I think it's really interesting to consider the telephone; Poster talks about what distinguishes the telephone from other forms of media. The telephone is writing about it is not the iPhone 14 we have today. It is wild to me that the telephone was revolutionary before it was wireless, and I remember when all we had was a landline that connected to the wall. The telephone was revolutionary before it could fit in your pocket, and Siri could answer all your questions, and texting was created. Helloooo! Craziness. Anyways, so Poster says that the telephone allowed for the "exchangeability of the positions of the sender and the receiver." The sender could be the receiver and vice versa; you could respond to someone, without physically being in front of them, and have them respond back in real time. I am getting genuinely excited about how cool this, I am thoroughly impressed with where we started and also how far we have come. When I think of Snapchat and other messaging apps it is wild to think that we used to call someone's landline and now I can send a picture of my face to someone, the word "Hi," and then it'll just disappear in 1-10 seconds. And then someone can respond?!? Our new forms of communication are so whacky when you think about it, I wonder what our theorists would say about it now...
Adios,
mg
Thoughtful and loaded with a dose of aptly placed concern, imo.
ReplyDeleteSomething to ponder: If we learned to transmit text messages (not Morris Code) to one another at the turn of the last century and advanced the concept of the telephone at the turn of this century, would hearing another's voice over a "line" have the same "cool" factor? I am reminded of the old adage, "technology isn't technology if it was in place before you were born,."