That line just about struck me speechless. It's a beautiful phrase.
Moving on, Innis also 'sees of a dialectical relationship between society and technology'. (directly lifted from the first article) In today's world, this is evident by people using video chat to perform university interviews.
He also writes of what he calls a 'time-based medium'. Using the example of a carved stone or the pyramids of Giza, he elaborates that they are not called such because of their weight, but because they have withstood the test of time & weathered the elements to survive to present day. I feel this is much like the Internet now - we can shut down a website, delete history and cookies from a computer, but it is never really gone. We can tape television programmes or newscast, but if we lack the devices to play them back in the future, what good will they do?
To turn to the second article which states that teens are texting more than they are speaking, let me relate this is the sad truth from nothing less than personal experience: My father's house is large. All of us children have bedrooms upstairs, with the kitchen & main television being below. To call us all to supper, he will send a text to the wayward girl who has her head buried in a textbook or music pounding through her ears. He is guaranteed a response more by that method that if he had stood at the foot of the stairs and shouted. I find it sad and a but pathetic we are reduced to communication through an electronic device that plugs into the wall rather than a face-to-face conversation. I would prefer he yell to attract attention, but I understand at least one wouldn't hear it. (and I realise one other may become hostile and demand to know why he was shouting.) I suppose this is just a way that we have adapted technology's form of communication to fit our needs.
photo (c) Alfred Molon
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