Tuesday, April 27, 2010

The Evolution of Media- Cell Phones

The way in which every day, it seems like, there is a new and better technology, really drives home Levinson's point made in chapter 13: "as we invent successive media- they eventually become increasingly human in their performance." (p.188)
It's amazing, really, how in just a few years, cell phones have taken over our lives. At first, we all thought it was incredible that we could talk on the phone outside of our landline house number, while we were at a baseball game, at the mall, or anywhere really, without having to use a pay phone.
Then we were taken by surprise again when text messages and email were introduced to our cell phones. We all thought, this is as good as it gets.
Even when cameras became a feature on phones, we were amazed. Does anyone remember how bad the quality of the pictures were on the first phones with cameras? Compared to today, it's kind of ridiculous how much they have improved, etc.
But once again, the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, took the world by storm. Now we can have all the things already mentioned, plus the ability to surf the web, watch YouTube or movies, play games, listen to our music, and so much more.
Like Levinson says, the evolution of media really demonstrates how our technology becomes more and more humanlike. As humans, we want more and more. We want the ability to search and find out anything at any given moment of our lives. And the way in which our technologies have increasingly become better at doing this for us satisfies our never-ending hunger for information.

1 comment:

  1. But how does that make the cell phone more like a human being?

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