summary of reading 3.2

This article is based on three periods of ethnographic reasearch between 1989 and 1991 on a small island situated off the coast of south west ireland. whiddy island lies in Bantry bay, country cork Eire. It is but three miles long and one and a half miles wide.
the purpose of the research was to calculate for the role of technology in changing social relationships on the island. It also discusses how whiddy island's 40 remaining inhabitants use the telephone and how the use has changed over time. the whiddy island population had declined from 259 to a mere of 40 in 1990. 34 of them were born on that island while the remaining six married an islander and settled there. when the research started, the island didnt have much facilities, and was hardly connected to the main island. even running water was introduced in 1982. suprisingly, like so many writers on the media, whiddy islanders priviliged television above all of the other modern items when the technologies simply arrived. television did not displace another media, that is one of the reasons why it is accepted uncritically. Unlike other technologies, its ancestors did not fall into disuse when it arrived. In the other hand, telephone, like other technologies was seen as a part of a progression by islanders. but yet it was much more efficient compared to postal systems. until the television arrived, the written and aural massages were received by the islanders as despictions of semi-strangers. but the telephone, was, however the first means of electronic communication.