Expectations Mirror Extent of Our Access and Experience

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We are inundated with information, coming at us from all sides via technology today. At times, it’s overwhelming and yet we do have control over how much we choose to take in and engage with. While this may well be the norm for many of us, it wasn’t all that long ago that mass media took entirely different form and shape and we had to pursue information rather than have it arrive at our fingertips via mobile and other portable electronic devices.

Our world moves at such a rate of speed, and technology with it. Children today have no idea how a rotary phone once operated, and perhaps only know what these devices are from imagery in preschool books and toys. Some “children remain bewildered by this archaic device, most are surprised to learn that this less than elegant contraption is actually a telephone; one child even asking if it was capable of text messaging” (Rodriguez, 2015, para. 1). While that sounds comical, this is their reality. In another few years, the devices we regularly use for communication today will seem just as outdated as the old-school telephone is now for youngsters. That’s how quickly we’re moving.

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Mass media has always affected our culture and how society gathers information. Most notably, it’s opened up our world and broadened our vantage point. Whereas we once knew only what directly surrounded our own community, with each new mass communication entity’s arrival, the door opened that much further, allowing us entry into new worlds far beyond our own. At first, it was incremental, with newspapers, magazines, radio and then television, allowing us interconnected communication experience, much of it at the very same time. Is it any wonder then that computers advanced these efforts in what seemed like warp speed in comparison? “Because the media are so prevalent in industrialized countries, they have a powerful impact on how those populations view the world” (Akin, 2005, para. 5).

A key word in the quote prior is ‘industrialized.’ Those countries experience a significant difference in how their world is viewed in comparison to regions of the world, which are not as connected via technology. It would be reasonable then to assume cultures that are not highly immersed in technology would foster expectations related to communication, based on what has always been the norm. As mass media does escalate in its abilities via the Internet and mobile devices, “our society continues to demand faster and better ways to converge mediums into ways that help us make our complex world less so” (Rodriquez, 2015, para. 11). That statement is perhaps most telling in that we now demand more and more of what technology can offer us, but also seek ways in which to simplify all that is surrounding us.

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References

Akin, J. (2005, March). Mass media | Beyond Intractability. Retrieved from http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/mass-communication

Rodriguez, K. (2015, November 30). Effects of mass media on society: How media convergence changed our world. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/effects-mass-media-society-how-convergence-changed-our-rodriguez