Thursday, February 19, 2009

"less Dramatic"

"Taking a more skeptical view of the early social impact on the telegraph and telephone, several recent studies have underlined the limits of the initial use of the technologies and cautioned against an overemphasised on new inventions at the expense of less dramatic changes, such as improvement in postal service, that affected a far larger volume of communication.(Starr,P.155)
I feel that this quote is almost trying to hold us back in a way. "Less dramatic"? Isn't that implying to play it safe? Many inventions and discoveries were not accomplished by people playing it safe. Take Ben Franklin for example I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure standing in the middle of a lightning storm with a metal rod is not the safest thing to do. Although it might be important to improvement in the postal service so a larger number of people can be affected.

1 Comments:

At 10:52 PM, Blogger A. Mattson said...

A key point.

Starr is arguing that the improvements in the efficiency of the transportation and postal system had a much greater effect on the lives of Americans and the speed of communications than the advent of telegraphy which took while to really have an impact on the everyday lives of many Americans.

 

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