Comments on Reading 4.1 & Reading 4.2

I find the readings are quite hard to understand, particularly the first one, but I'll try my best to explain the main concept.

The reading discusses the relationship between the technology and the society, whether the technology is seen as the cause and the society as the effect or vice versa. There are two main opinions about the relationship between technology and society: technological determinism and symptomatic technology.

Technological determinism basically points technology as the cause and society as the effect. A change in technology triggers change in society. In other words, technology determines the society. Symptomatic technology, on the other hand, points society as the cause and technology as the effect. A change in technology is merely a result of control by the society.

However, I would like to think the ideal way to see the relationship is the balance between the two opposing views. It is a cyclic relationship that continuously affect one another. Without doubt, the development of technology has altered the society greatly. Although technology is accidental, radio and television are not invented coincidentally in the same time when the society is in need of a new form of communication that is more effective and more efficient; the development took place to suit the society's growing need.

Summary reading p 86 -92

Pre-modern communities were based on the the social relations that predicated sharing, the modern community is based on the social relations that bind independent individuals together. In the begining the phone was accepted as a mean of practical impersonal use for business. People used to have a phone as community property. They often gathered around the phone as a social meeting point while waiting for a phone call. Later as more people had the phones in their homes, the phone’s use has changed into social personal use for keeping in touch with family and friends. The phone had some how changed the way they interacted. Although it seemed on the surface that they no longer interacted face to face, however it didn’t mean that the interaction had stopped. In fact, communication since the introduction of the private telephone had changed form into non- constricted time space limitation.
Later as the society evolved, telephone had develop into a form of mass communication. The telephone has a new kind of public use. The development of the radio and television phone-in or chat show has serve to highlight the use of the telephone for public broadcasting. Chat shows enable the audience to speak, and the receiver to become the sender of the message, allowing for the roles of audience and broadcaster to be interchangeable. Audience participation brings the private into the public as well as taking the public into the private. The traditional, space-bound narrative interaction declines, but narrative does not disappear. It too, like time and space, is renegotiated. As sociability enters the public domain, linguistic practises also changed in the local situation. Telecommunications and broadcasting transform both how people communicate, who they communicate with and what they communicate about in the real world of their daily lives.

Comments on Reading 3.3

The reading discusses how mobile technologies transform the concept of everyday time and space.

Firstly, mobile technologies promotes the idea of "anytime, anywhere" connection. It eliminates the limitations of geographical distance. The ever-growing society constantly needs new forms of communication, and mobile technologies provide it.

It also discusses how various type of age group use mobile phones. Teenagers also uses mobile phones for coordination purposes, just like adults. Sometimes just for a simple "where are you?" messages, whether they send it to their parents or their friends. However useful mobile technologies can be, some people also think mobile phones can cause inevitable interruptions. Marshall McLuhan even states "The telephone is an irresistible intruder in time and space".

I think the development of mobile technologies are extraordinary because the radical change to the "anytime, anywhere" concept grows extremely fast. One can only imagine how it may still develop rapidly in a way we can never imagine. Perhaps, one day we will develop a tool to communicate with aliens?