Blog Response 1

Blog entry writing prompt: Postman describes how the horse stir-up changed the nature of battle and thus disrupted society in the 8th century. Similarly, bows and arrows were replaced by guns, which resulted in eradication of a society.

Thinking of digital media as tools, how have they affected our culture? Postman says the tools “become the culture.” Do you agree? Why or why not? Think of a comparable invention today that changed society and explore its potential impact.

Digital media has had a drastic impact on our culture over just the past decade alone. Digital media are definitely tools that we use at our disposal. We use Facebook as a tool to keep in touch with loved ones and post about our lives, we use email in place of post mail and refer to it constantly to communicate with people at work and school -- and that's just to name a couple key digital media aspects. I absolutely believe that Postman is right when he says that the tools "become the culture." Today, in 2015, it is almost impossible not to use digital media. Our whole culture has adapted to replacing previous tools of communication with all things social media. Our world today revolves around constantly improving on our digital media "tools." I would say the most comparable invention today that has changed society would have to be the smart phone. The smart phone has been a very powerful and dynamic invention -- which is constantly being improved and updated on. The reason that the smart phone has had such an impact on our society, is because of the digital media "tools" that it is capable of. That iPhone in your pocket has the whole digital world at your fingertips; you can catch up with your friends on Facebook, surf the internet on the Safari browser, email your boss from your iCloud account, watch a cute cat video on YouTube, call your mom from the phone function -- and that's just to name a few. It is quite common today for a person to not even have a landline telephone in their home, or send bill payments through post mail. I really do not see the smart phone going anywhere any time soon. I think that the potential impact can be even more incredible than what we already have witnessed. I mean, think about the FaceTime function -- with just the help from our phone/tablet/computer and wifi, we are able to video chat with people from all over the world. I can only begin to imagine what's next for the world of smart phones. Maybe while video chatting with a loved one overseas you can instantaneously purchase a plane ticket through your smart phone to visit them, or have a digital concierge in your smart phone to help you with everyday real life tasks? The possibilities are really quite endless.