New Media and My Background
1. I experienced no genuine “a-ha” moments while reading page 135 of The Medium and the Message. I did experience a bit of wonderment at the idea that the computer could be viewed as a “new type of book.”
Currently a book is a mass-produced item, as are most computers. However, a book’s audience is limited to the single person reading it. The ability of a book to distribute the ideas it contains depends on its circulation. The ability of a computer to distribute its memes is vast, as long as it has an Internet connection. Basing an argument on lone, unconnected, computers is fundamentally flawed in this age of nearly ubiquitous broadband connections. (Finnish people now have a legal right to a broadband connection.) When one burns a book, one is destroying the ability of those memes to continue. Destroying a computer is every bit as effective as burning x copies of a book with infinite copies - pointless. Or a book that is instantly reproduced in the ashes, like a phoenix. Also pointless.
True, books and computers are repositories of knowledge. That, I’m afraid, is where the fundamental similarities end. Books are not interactive. Books are not connected to anything but the reader. The ideas in books are dependent on the existence of the physical object. These attributes are not necessarily true of computers. As such, I do not think the computer can be viably seen as a new type of book.
I was bummed that the podcast never answered the question of physical changes in the brain. They talked around the subject, but never addressed it directly. Mostly they spoke of the “mind,” not the brain. And, no, the mind and the brain are not the same (e.g. Consciousness Explained, Dennett, 1991).
While I, again, missed any “a-ha” moments, I did experience another “mmmm, that’s too bad” moment toward the end. It seems that “people,” and their relationships, are becoming shallower. Pinging and/or tweeting to folks is not a meaningful relationship, but folks seem to be tending that direction. Meaningful interactions seem to be disappearing. Sad.
As to how all of this relates to my field (mechanical design), um, . . . The dependence of my field on computers insures that the collective knowledge gained will not be lost. The tendency of people to escape their current environment via some techno-gadget, their shorter attention spans, their inability to maintain their focus, implies that either mechanical design will suffer terribly, or these types of people will not be able to find employment in the field (I’m hoping for the latter). The “new landscape of interaction,” from the discussion, seemed primarily about fleeting, barely-qualifies-as, interactions. In a field that requires minute details, slight interactions do not provide sufficient time or space to convey the requisite amount of detail.
2. Cinema does not seem to have much of an impact on the field of mechanical design, aside from entertaining the designers and engineers.
This would be a very small field indeed, if there were not books to convey knowledge to the next generation. Updates to protocols, etcetera, are provided in print, in part to keep a record of communications. Pictures provide much of the requisite detail, too.
3. Leaving aside the fundamental changes in the society as a whole (that is several dissertations right there), new media technologies have had significant impacts on my field.
Faster computers means designs take less time to complete. Also, finite element analysis is possible. Virtual prototyping saves huge amounts of time and expense. Moreover, this also decreases dramatically the number of actual prototypes that must be made, reducing total waste. The faster the computers in a design company, the more efficient, the less wasteful, and the more profitable the company will be (probably).
The Internet permits designers across the world to share designs and refinements, thus reducing the number of people who need to have the same insight. This reduces their cerebral load, increasing their ability to discover a different-yet-brilliant resolution to some other problem entirely. With good enough connection speeds, the new design firm can use a world wide office.
Wireless communications has only a moderate affect on mechanical design. Most of the designing takes place in front of a computer – with a hard-wired Internet connection. Wireless and/or mobile communications technologies simply permit designers and engineers to be reached wherever they are (not that they could do much without a computer). The best one could get would be a designer with a laptop at some café with wireless ‘net.
Advances in processor bus and clock speeds have enabled mighty software. This has enabled better designs, less waste, etcetera. New media technologies have had a relatively minor impact on mechanical design.
