"Acoustic Space" Reading 2

1. In the pre-literate world, acoustic space was derived from being able to hear and become immersed in information. A human can never turn off their sense of hearing, and he or she is able to collect a vast majority of information while being totally immersed in the audio. This is unlike the visual world where information is not totally spread out across various platforms and only comes from a single source or read by a single person at a given time. The media of television becomes part of the acoustic world because it can be immersive. The same images can be seen on televisions anywhere at any time. It is figuratively acoustic because it can be ubiquitous, sending the same message or images all over the country at the same time.

2. The alphabet had segregating tendencies because it used to be a solitary medium. Books could only be read by one person at a time and if people wanted to make copies of books they would have to write down and transcribe each and every page. This reverses due to the printing press because now a vast majority of books could easily be printed quickly and efficiently. Now more people could begin to read more texts at any given time.

3. Cyberspace becomes acoustic because anyone at any given point can write something on the Internet and have it read by a vast number of people at one time. It now has the ability to appear on screens around the country very efficiently. This is very different from television, radio or print media because authors must create the material and publish it, binding the readers. The Internet is where anyone can create a piece of work and allow thousands of people to be exposed to it.

4. The two selection criteria for the evolution of media are:

         
 a.     we want media to extend beyond the boundaries of seeing and hearing.

b.     We want media to recapture elements of communication that early artificial extensions may have lost.

In 20 years, we will not see much change in that cyberspace will still be a place for acoustic space. But it will evolve much like biological evolution has. There will be preservation of some media and others will evolve such as the radio has remained but the telegraph did not. However as media evolves the alphabet will not be put majorly in new media because it is very abstract and cannot convey emotion or speech in the way people would like.