Blog the First

There is a difference between the ways in which the popular media and scholars discuss technology. There always has been, probably ever since popular media was invented. Newspapers of the time probably glossed over the technical aspect of the light-bulb while the scientific community marvelled at it. But why does this difference exist?

The popular media must appeal to a wide range of viewers, both educated and uneducated. This limits the extent to which the media can examine technologies. News stories rarely talk about the programming or engineering that goes into any new technology, because frankly most people would not care. Instead they focus on how the technology impacts the lives of the viewers. Movies show computers as complicated and mysterious. This article on Drivl.com has a list of what computers do in the movies that does not (and should not) happen in real life.

Scholars, on the other hand, can assume a certain intelligence and understanding when discussing technology. They very often discuss the behind-the-scenes aspect of new technologies. The best example is the open source software movement. There are open source projects and communities springing up all over the Internet -- Linux and Mozilla Firefox are among the more well known. These communities are groups of programmers and software engineers who get together to design and build new software. If one were to visit their forums, one would notice the maturity and knowledge displayed compared to other more popular online forums. They discuss code and debate different algorithms, and generally talk about the "nerdy", less popular side of technology.

Maybe the average man does not care about the latest technology because it never really changes his life. After all, how revolutionary can new ICTs be? The answer is pretty darned revolutionary. The printing press was one of the most revolutionary inventions of its time; it allowed the middle and lower classes to afford books, which meant that they could have access to information previously only attainable by the rich. In more recent times, there are the radio, the television, the computer, and of course the Internet. The last is one of the most revolutionary of all, because it is still evolving decades after its creation. Search engines like Google and Yahoo bring information directly to the seeker, instead of him or her having to go out looking for it. Community sites like Youtube and DeviantArt allow members to share and discuss videos and artwork from almost anywhere on the globe. These capabilities didn't exist even 10 years ago. According to Michael Rothschild, a published economist,

Since the invention of the microprocessor, the cost of moving a byte of information around has fallen on the order of 10-million-fold. Never before in the human history has any product or service gotten 10 million times cheaper — much less in the course of a couple decades. That's as if a 747 plane, once at $150 million a piece, could now be bought for about the price of a large pizza.

That is an impressive figure. Remember that a byte is eight bits, that is the answers to eight yes or no questions. But the most impressive part is the fact that it has never happened before. Is that not what being revolutionary is all about? Surely, therefore, it is a little too cynical to say that ICTs never cause social transformations.

Works Cited

Kling, Rob, Howard Rosenbaum, and Steve Sawyer. Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics. New Jersey: Information Today, Inc., 2005.