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1/26/2025 Blog post
Downey’s view of technology and advancement is very broad spanning from the rise of agricultural practices to the modern day, seeing technology as a tool for communication but also the possible downfall of it. He breaks down the American information age into four technological-based periods, Print communication and transportation, Network and Interpersonal communication, broadcast mass communication, and Computer-mediated communication however he states that these are not static periods and the end of one is not an instant transfer into the other. We have held over from one medium to another, the File systems of our computer made to look like that of a filing cabinet, the recycling bin Icon and how web pages mimic print newspapers, this is know as Skeuomorphs and a prime example of the blurring of the lines between these periods of technological advancement.
Downey speaks of the establishment of large communication infrastructure projects and the advancement of technology as reliance of  private business on public support to build and maintain the required construction to advance a technology which will soon become obsolete and newly replaced.

Downey also has a unique perspective compared to the other authors that we have read looking at the role that capitalism , consumerism and cost has played in our communication. In the last 200 the rise in the amount of energy that is produced and the reduction of the cost to send a message from east coast to west is staggeringly low. The greatest challenge to communication that humans had faced through most of their history (distance) has been vanquished and replaced by new obstacles.