Reading Main Ideas & Examples

Question 1

Berkun: we understand the history of innovation (rosetta stone and printing press)

Answer 1

Gutenberg’s story is that his influence was not felt in his lifetime. He wasn’t a
hero of his age, and, like the makers of the Rosetta Stone, his intentions were not the same as those for which we
credit him today. He was not trying to free the world through access to knowledge or to pave the way for the Internet
Age—as best as we can tell, he was simply trying and failing to make a living

His influence, similar to the impact of the Rosetta Stone, owes as much to circumstance, world politics, and chance as
to his abilities as a printmaker.

History can’t give attention to what’s been
lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success

against techno-evolutionism (says is wishful thinking)

Question 2

Susan Douglas: whig history of technology

Answer 2

there was some ineluctable, teleological move toward the ever-better, interrogation of the myth of progress

Question 3

Susan Douglas: global village

Answer 3

technologies constitute a new, electronic nervous system that radiates around the world, connecting people and cultures in unprecedented ways and more intimate ways

Question 4

scopic technologies

Answer 4

as instruments of viewing, listening, and observing, they can slide our perceptions inward or outward

Question 5

Carey: importance of the telegraph

Answer 5

-first great industrial monopoly –> western union
-telegraph: “nerve of the industry,” brought about changes in the structure of awareness
-it focused on the problem: the economy of signal
-the telegraph altered but did not displace patterns of connection formed by natural geography
-TELEGRAPH permitted the effective separation of communication from transportation; it freed communication from the constraints of technology