Political redlining is another kind of information segregation. Howard (2006) identified three ways it can happen over hypermedia. First, the population is segregated as likely voters and less-likely voters, and only the likely voters are attended to and served with information while the less-likely voters are neglected. Second, political redlining can occur when someone filters political information for Web site users who have signed up for content. Third, it can also happen when an individual chooses to privilege some information sources over others by “relying on Web rings for content or by setting topical preferences with news portals.” (p. 132)

This concept is analytically useful, because it points out the potential harms that the e-politics practices can produce. Though it seems reasonable, productive or maybe even natural to campaign managers, political redlining is being discriminatory and can do harm to the whole citizenry. It is obvious that the neglected parts of population are harmed by being excluded from social participation, and therefore gaining no attention from the government or policy makers and losing their voice. However, even the parts of population that attracted enough attention from e-politics managers do not benefit from the segregation either. The more segregated the population and the more tailored information each sub-population is fed with (if they are at all), the more fragmented the social perception, experience and ideology. The “less active” people may become even more less active, with little information stimulus, while the “active” people are only active with very narrow and limited views. It would become harder and harder to have conversation across these segregations, because there is less and less common ground.

One critical assumption that is not explicitly stated here is that the population heavily relies on the e-politics managers for information delivery: The neglected sub-populations receive no political information and the targets ones only consume what they are fed with. It is a relatively passive view of the citizens. The neglected subpopulation may have their own information channels and the targeted subpopulations may have options between different information sources and channels. They are definitely affected by the information segregation but their information behaviors will not be completely determined by it. They can also exert some impact on the whole society including the e-politics managers. Especially the under-served subpopulations, feeling being neglected too long, they may burst out and make clear their existence in a radical way. According to the systems theory, they are all interdependent parts of the systems, and will all exert influence on the whole system. I don’t perceive an explicit statement of the causal relationship. And with the impacts in both directions, I don’t consider it is best to be call a causal relationship.

The effect of media on national sovereignty is conditioned by many factors, including geopolitical, technical, ideological, economic, cultural, social and historical ones. Price especially emphasized the geopolitical, technical, and economic factors. Though not endorsing technology determinism, Price believes that the pace and pattern of introduction of new technologies has a major impact on national responses in terms of sovereignty (p.235). States with more advanced technologies have more power and agency. When the US planes jammed SRT signals while simultaneously broadcasting its own information, the Bosnian Serb government could only protest, though furiously.

The effect of media on a country’s sovereignty is determined by its political and economic stability and development, its dominant ideology and social norms, and its history of free trade and national security concerns. Due to globalization, it is also affected by these factors in its neighboring or even non-neighboring countries. The unique combination of all these factors leads to specific consequences on media policy and national sovereignty. Any change in the combination will affect the consequence. Media policy may have unexpected outcome when some of the factors are overlooked or misunderstood.

To understand whether the radio and telephone industries’ inattention to the general public’s use was a fault or an inevitable stage of technology development, we need to understand the different “imagined users” by Douglas and Fischer and by the industries. What factors led them to their respective conclusions and would it be better or even practical for the industries to have adopted a different concept of “imagined users”? This paper will first introduce two related concepts – “imagined users” and “diffusion of innovation,” – and then present historical evidence why the inventors and the industries developed their imagined users and how this concept guided their technical and business practice.

Based on its high space bias and low time bias, Innis probably would propose that the Internet is a communication medium that encourages geographical extension and democratic society and discourages long lasting tradition and customs.

Take the geographical extension as an example. Though nowadays’ state boundaries are more stable than in earlier human history, and therefore territory expansion is less frequent, political and cultural influence can and in many cases has successfully overcome geographic barriers with the use of the Internet. Similar to Innis’s analysis of radio, the Internet changed the communication boundaries from the political and geographical ones to the linguistic one, i.e. it extends influences to people speaking the same language. Therefore, the Internet should encourage people to look beyond their local area and have more interest in the outside world.

Many people also share the belief that the Internet encourages democracy. If newspaper, and radio have encouraged democracy by quickly disseminating information and creating an informed public, the superior speed the Internet offers should render it great contribution to the development of democracy. Even better than newspaper and radio, the Internet breaks the information monopoly, and give the voice to diverse parties – a basic characteristic of a democratic society.

However, since the online information is low on the time bias, it is hard to have long lasting tradition and customs. A piece of online information can have enormous impact in a moment, and completely lose the impact the next moment. Tradition and customs are replaced by fads, which come and go quickly without many deep meanings.

Therefore, the Internet society could be one in which people receive information fast, react to information fast, but show no profound patterns or principles for those reactions.

Innis examined a series of Western civilizations, and characterized them as either emphasizing control over time or control over space. He explained the rise and fall of each of these civilizations as due to their differential emphasis over time and space. It is frequently stated that the previous civilization was replaced by the new one because the new one corrected the previous one in its failure to strengthen the control over time (or space), and the new one was replaced by the newer one because while overcorrecting the previous one, the new civilization weakened its control over space (or time). It seems the civilizations alternate between control over time and over space, trying to reach the equilibrium.

Innis believed the inherent traits of the primary communication medium in each civilization determine whether it would emphasize the control over time or space. Media heavy but durable, like clay and stone, led to emphasis on control over time, while media light but perishable, like papyrus and parchment, led to emphasis on control over space.

Innis’s propositions are original, especially by assigning communication medium such a critical role in historical development of human civilization. It is inspiring that the medium affects potentials for the content, channels and influence of communication, which affect the control and stability of a civilization. Using tangible artifacts such as stone and papyrus to explain human history may sound more convincing to many people than inferring from historical events and figures, the “facts” of which are frequently under dispute.

However, Innis’s view is a strong version of technology determinism. The available technology, the communication medium in this case, is the only determinant for the development of human civilization. No agency is counted, either in selection among alternative media or in the actual organizing and governing carried out in different civilizations. Human beings seem completely passive and controlled by the communication medium. Therefore, while offering a new and intriguing perspective, Innis missed many other factors that should be taken into consideration, and offered an oversimplified explanation.

However, in Trinidad, according to Miller and Slater’s description, the general public welcomed the Internet more quickly and with more enthusiasm. The majority of the households in Trinidad have at least one family member who gets online. Email and online chatting are nothing novel to the Trinidadians. Many people even created their own websites and take the responsibility to introduce Trinidad to the world.

Compared to all this, the Trinidadian business world is far left behind. Most companies seem have no idea what the Internet can do for them. They know it is a cool thing, and they are supposed to use it, but they don’t know how to use it. Therefore, many of them just use it for their online “flyer.” They have no suggestions on what to put on their website or how to design it, let alone how to use it for ecommerce, like integrating the front and the back sides. The whole advertising industry was virtually taking no part in the development of the Internet in Trinidad, and few of them have their own website (p.153)

There are at least two reasons for this difference. The first reason is about the development stage of the technology. In the books on radio and telephone, we read about the “birth” of the technology: at that time and in that place, that technology, though as a combination of many previously existing technologies, occurred and was adopted for the first time. However, the Trinidad story is different. When the Internet was introduced into Trinidad, it has been widely adopted both by the business and the general public in US and other developed countries. The telecommunication and ISP companies and the general public all know how the Internet can serve the general public and what a big market it is. Thus, the market for the general public was not ignored or left behind.

The Trinidadian characteristics are another reason. The big-scaled overseas migration of the Trinidadian population makes the general public whole-heartedly appreciate the function of the Internet in connecting geographically dispersed family members. However, reluctance of the business world is also rooted in the Trinidadian characteristics. Their inadequate infrastructure and small local market make the business world believe that any reasonable level of expenditure is not justified (p.154). Therefore, for the Internet in Trinidad, it is the general public’s use surpassing the business’s use.

An example for this dynamic is how Internet helps the Trinidadians maintain their “natural” family structure. Before the arrival of the Internet in Trinidad, its family structure, as the basic social unit, was under threat due to the widespread Caribbean emigration. According to Miller and Slater, in the vast majority of families at least one member at the nuclear level was living abroad at the time of their study. Without the Internet, this radical change due to emigration could have destroyed the family structure, which is considered natural and to the core value of the Trinidadian culture. Fortunately, there came the Internet, especially the email, which is an intuitive, pleasant, effective and inexpensive way for geographically separated family members to keep in touch, and more importantly, to fulfill their familial roles and responsibilities “that had been ruptured by Diaspora” (p. 56).

I think interviews, the major method used in this book, are appropriate for the analysis of this dynamic. To examine expansive realization, it is important to know what the Trinidadians believe they are or should be in deep. It is a belief and very subjective, and is hard to be derived from observation or second-handed data. In-depth interviews with many Trinidadians help the researchers not only get the record of their Internet use, but help them dig out what the Trinidadians hold as the core values and how Internet enabled them to preserve them.

Fischer analyzed and compared different explanations for this decline, combining the methods of a historian and of a sociologist. Scrutinizing previous commentaries, he came up with 3 potential explanations: 1) disinterest of the large companies; 2) the poor quality of many mutuals’ service; and 3) the increasing availability of other communication technologies. Analyses against other historical facts in the same period, such as the adoption rate of automobile and electricity, led him to conclude that none of these explanations suffice. Then he conducted some statistical analyses, as a sociologist would have, and found that financial strain, substitute technologies (like automobile), and perhaps marketing decisions all contribute to the decline in rural households’ telephone subscription.
I think Fischer’s analysis is convincing, and demonstrates a strength in his method. This decline highlights his points on the importance of the institutional, economic, and political contexts and on the mythic nature of “the internal logic of technology”. Even for a “successful” technology, its development and adoption are affected by various factors external to the technology itself, such as the general financial situation, sellers’ marketing strategy, customers’ priority list, the government’s policies, and development and adoption of other related technologies.

Since very early, Fessenden believed “that the spark gas had to be replaced by a transmitter that sent out a continuous, sustained wave train, and that the receiver had to be constantly receptive to detect these waves” (p45). In 1906, he did the first radio broadcast of music and speech. Though this is kind of a by-product of his research on improving point-to-point communication and he had never brought it to publicity, it is a critical development for radio broadcasting. If Fessenden had focused on wireless telephony rather than the transatlantic work in the first place (rather than losing much money on transatlantic work and then turn to wireless telephony), he could have avoided losing much investment on the aerial equipments and could have gained some precious time advantage. They could have closed the deal with AT&T before the 1907 panic and the following organizational change of AT&T. If NESCO and AT&T both profited from wireless telephony, this technology would become much more prominent to the general public and the military. With more advanced technology, some prominence in press, and a good business plan for profit, NESCO could have been a stronger competitor to Marconi’s company and might have beaten it. If NESCO had been more financially stable, and Fessenden had been more satisfied with his achievements, he might have made better decisions on whether and how much to get involved in those untimely lawsuits. He might also have had more time and energy working on the by-product of his main research – radio broadcasting. If he had popularized it, the amateurs would have had less historical contribution in the history of radio. To push it even further, if he had had the close relationship with the navy as he wished to, radio broadcasting could have been adopted by the government/military first, and start as a political tool. Then the history of radio would have been completely different.

Neuman commented that Williams's book reflected his “uneasiness with … the whole notion of gathering data to test ideas,” indicating that Williams did not do or did not do enough of gathering data and testing ideas. So did Williams gather data and test his ideas? And if he didn't, as Neuman claimed, does it make his book lack of sophistication and focus and therefore lack of constructive influence?

Williams obviously did data gathering and analysis, as long as data and analysis are not equalized with number and statistics. In the former part, he tried to recount the history of television’s development. He explored both the technology aspect and the social and commercial aspects, and tried to understand/explain their interrelationship. I think these historical records, presented not in numbers but in characters, are valuable data, and his analysis is insightful and inspiring. In the latter part of the book, he collected data on TV programs and did some content analysis. Though it is not so fascinating to me as the former part, I guess it fits Neuman’s definition of data collection better.

I don’t think Williams tested his ideas, but I don’t think it is his purpose either. He gathered and analyzed information in order to develop a theory or at least an understanding of television. He even made some predictions at the end of the book about the future development of television, based on his theory/understanding, though he wouldn’t have tested them due to his temporal limitation.

To give a definitive review of television, Williams included a lot in his book. Due to the broad topic and the length of the book, it might seem lack of focus. However, it is not my impression. I feel that the whole book focuses on the cause-effect relation between television and all other aspects of our life. He first talked about how to identify and study a cause-effect relation, especially cautioned against some popular but flawed thinking. Later he briefly analyzed some cause-effect relations himself.

With all these reasons above, I do not agree with Neuman’s critique. He is right in that Williams didn’t test any specific hypotheses with statistical data analysis, but this does not make his work lack of focus or sophistication. His historical and inductive point of view should have a constructive influence on the design and execution of research on television, as it did.