week 4 - Questions Answered 02

respond with answers to Patrick Vargas's questions.

From O’Regan, G., Chapter 6 - The Internet Revolution. In A Brief History of Computing.
Will there ever be another Dot Com Crash like before with another piece of technology? It seems people knew too little about the internet and attacked it with practices that aren't appropriate for the technology.
I think it is something that just comes with the cycling of technology. I think that the shortcuts that a technology creates will inevitably catch up to its actual development and hit a kind of plateau. That seems to be the general trend. 

From Wiener, N., 1954. Cybernetics in History. In Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Why does the author believe "that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it"? Are there no other facilities?
I had this same basic question when I read this. That statement seems to color the article a bit naive. I would argue that in the study of sociology, simply disregarding all the of the many layers of interaction that exist in the social world is probably pretty taboo. Once I began to notice this very distinct oversight, it made me question the author for the rest of the piece. I understand that the analysis of all the complexity of human beings is obviously much to expansive, however he needed to provide an explanation of the why he chose to put all the focus on interpersonal communication.

From Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J.H. & Jackson, D.D., 1967. Some Tentative Axioms of Communication. In Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
What would the author think of communication now a days with the use of text messaging, multimedia messaging, email, and social media?
I think she would acknowledge the detriment that most of these forms of limited communication cause. The need to distill and condense is only going to decrease understanding and shorten patience.