Use Innis’s Concepts of “Time-Biased” and “Space-Biased” Media and His Ideas on Oral and Written Media to Analyse the Internet

This is a breakdown of Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves to death"(1985), which must be written to explain the effects that high volume of emails, text messages, video games, and internet television has on the human race and the way we think. In the first chapter of the book "The Medium is the Metaphor" Postman (1985) begins his argument that he presents through out the book. Postman (1985) explains how knowledge is no longer gained from print, but from visual. This change is dramatic and irreversibly and the two print and visual can not accommodate one another. In chapter 2 Postman (1985) lays out a plan for the book. Postman (1985) rants and raves about how television is evil and has

You may also want to review some of the sources listed in the Background as “of general interest”, with particular attention to the

Clive Thompson and Neil Postman are authors who discuss specific mediums through writing. Postman writes about the television and newspaper and Thompson writes about the internet age. Both of these authors use the same approach on their respected mediums. In comparison they both have the same piece of writing. Comparing side by side, it reveals a bigger idea that the communication medium always outweigh the cons.

Advances in technology has altered the world as we know it, and it can only progress farther. Through the minds of many intelligent and devoted individuals across time technology has developed into a twenty first century deity. A young child one hundred years ago could never envision a world like ours today, ruled by ones and zeros. The media has affected us in ways that we can’t even comprehend and will continue to steadily provide humans with a faster and faster flow of information for years to come. But what is the cost to have all of the information you can imagine at your fingertips? The exponential increase in information that we process in all forms of media is affecting the way that we live by making society more alienated.

During the mid-1900's, daily newspapers and magazines were important sources of information. In the 1940's, the radio supplied another source of media and broadcast to the masses. Individuals spent their evenings tuned into radio stations to listen to accounts of the ongoing war. During this era, daily newspapers were still accessible and still utilized by most people. In the 1950s, television was invented and subsequently became a primary media communications tool. The information broadcast through television was a combination of information from the radio and the daily newspaper. In 1962, satellites offered access to world news. From that point to now, Americans have expanded mass communication to include smart phones and the Internet, as new technology

During this time television had not completely ascended and editorials, decisions made by daily editors and coverage by their correspondents shaped public perception to a far greater degree than today, when an increasing number of readers get their information throughout the day via the Internet.

In his article, The Mediatisation of Society Theory, Hjarvard (2008) deduces that media simultaneously become an integrated part of society, not to mention the existence of new media like the Internet. In fact, this integration of Internet into our daily life has made us live in the digital age where information is shared in real time and in global context. Castells (2007) even argues that in this digital age, people are able to expand their local communication activities to

The writings on oral traditions by Eric Hanson relate to the historical thinking concept of historical perspective. As part of a quote in the article, Hereditary Chief Stephen J. Augustine states that "the Elders left with a knowledge that was built by the collectivity [of Elders]", and that this collectivity comes from the sharing of stories (Indigenous Traditions, paragraph 1). Moreover, Eric Hanson writes that many Aboriginal groups will use writing as a form of record keeping, they still "greatly value the oral transmission of knowledge as an intrinsic aspect of their cultures and societies" (Indigenous Traditions, paragraph 3). Both of these statements relate to historical perspective as one can see that oral traditions can be used to

“Cyberspace is not a physical place - it defies measurement in any physical dimension or time space continuum. It is a shorthand term that refers to the environment created by the confluence of cooperative networks of computers, information systems, and telecommunication infrastructure commonly referred to as the World Wide Web” (Wingfield 2007, 45).

“Societies have always been shaped by media for communication, it is impossible to understand social and cultural change without knowledge of the workings of media even the alphabet is a technology that is absorbed by young children to learn to speak through communication. The digital age is changing the way we use our brains. Rather than store important facts, today we are more likely to store information about how to find those facts where a particular file is located on the computer, how to find an important webpage again.

In the early days of civilization, before written records were made, oral traditions were necessarily important. Such pre-literate societies relied on oral transmission to propagate their customs and traditions. A conscious choice has been made in the choice of words for the title of this paper regarding the use of oral tradition as opposed to oral transmission, the reason being that the language in focus is Khasi.

Oral traditions are historical traditions passed down by word of mouth from one generation to another without written instruction. Oral tradition was used during

Certain media theorists such as Sherry Turkle do an incredible job on studying these properties of technology and their bearing on us, but sometimes seem to dwell on the negative side of the analysis. In short some of these media theorists do astonishing work studying the impact socially that using and communicating through modern technology has, but then takes a negative stance due to their archaic understanding of what is capable with these technologies. We have come so far in the past years in advancing humanity and its natural predicaments while being heavily reliant on technology to communicate. Not noting that advancement is pessimistic and

Between 1960 and today, there have been many milestones in mass media and the way it has been presented to us. In the 1960’s television sets were becoming very popular in many households across America. The first televised presidential debate took place on September 26, 1960. “1963: Polls show more Americans report that they rely on television rather than newspapers as their primary source for news.” (“1963: Polls show…” PBS, n.d.) With the television becoming the new medium for people to gain information, this was a major milestone in how information was gathered and perceived. Also in the 1960’s the first stages of development of the internet began. Early computers were also being produced. This had set the stage for upcoming years in technology that would affect the experience of presidential elections by all.

Time and progression are usually concepts that are found to work in unison, and this connection is profoundly present in the development of technology. Human advancements in the creation of life altering machinery has taken leaps and bounds in terms of how it has altered society, yet one has to consider the effects these developments have on already existing methods of a functioning civilization. One example of this phenomenon is the expansion of journalism from a closely knit field providing the news to an entirely open platform, via the internet, offering anyone the chance to spread information with previously unheard of haste. Attempting to impede the ever extending hand of change is an impossible task; however, it leads to an interesting argument about the impact of information sharing—particularly concerning journalism—now that there is such a readily available line of communication that can reach near anywhere in the world. As knowledge now resides a few button clicks away it brings about speculation considering integrity of the author and information that are presented, both of which seem to have been further diminished by the vast range of who can offer news in this modern digital age.