ARTSSCI 1A06 Lecture 4: 4) The Rise of Symbolic Thinking 2
17 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Why do we attend to the things to which we attend? . The most important resource or commodity today is attention. We can get anything else if we can get attention. Bias: in uence, leaning, not a certain or 100 percent cause. Determined: certain, 100 percent cause, could never be otherwise. Different media nudges our attention (and knowledge) in different directions. Something about the characteristics and requirements of particular media that affect us. Existing conditions matter - the geography, society, and history in which media appears. Questions we ask when we look at communications media: Easy to transport (cellphone is very portable, rst supercomputers were not). Cuneiform tablets would have been signi cantly portable - could send instructions, orders, etc. Allows centralized authorities to expand their spatial reach. This creates new power dynamics, supports extensive and far-reaching empires. It matters how long the media will last.
