Will Rawlings Media Law and Literacy Blog and More

I think one of the most major innovations that was heavily subject to the Diffusion of Innovations Theory was the mobile phone. Initially, "mobile" phones were connected to cars and costed a lot of money. However, in 1973, Motorola released the first truly mobile phone prototype. The prototype, and the consumer models based on it, that came out a whole 10 years later, in 1983, had 30-minute call time but a 10 hour charge time. Even with these specifications, there were many early adopters, with people on wait-lists for the “mobile” phones. Cell phones took several years to become common, even though there were many early adopters, as the barrier to entry was very high due to cost and limited locations. Eventually, as with virtually all technologies, cell phones became smaller, more affordable, and overall better. I would say that the early majority and late adopters for cell phones are kind of blurred together. It's quite obvious why cell phones caught on, the abili...

The CED You have probably never heard of the Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED), but this technology was way ahead of its time, at least at the time of its initial invention. Unfortunately, corporate politics and scientists themselves delayed the launch to the point that it was obsolete at the time of release, as it was competing with VCR. I was inspired to write about the CED due to a series of YouTube videos by Technology Connections about the topic. The CED was an analog video format inspired by vinyl records. Unlike modern discs that are read by a laser, the CED uses a stylus, similar to the vinyl records previously mentioned. The CED was started by RCA in 1964 by a group of four scientists. Eventually, it became named the "SelectaVision," which was also, confusingly, used as a name for a few other RCA products. The CED went through several iterations before a PVC-Carbon blend (carbon added to make the disc conductive.) One big advantage of the CED was that the discs coul...

When was the last time you've seen an "antiwar" voice in the main stream media? If not directly "antiwar," what about anti-interventionists? It seems that you have to go out of your way to find media that expresses a more "antiwar" bias. I think the main point is that since the end of WWII, the US has become the "world police." Before WWII, the US was fairly isolationist , it joined both WWI and WWII a few years after both started. WWII solidified the US as a "world power." This caused society to shift in their views, simply making the antiwar viewpoint much less common. The US became involved in many wars since then, such as the Korean War, Vietnam War, the Gulf Wars, and a few other wars. These wars and other US interventions have made it “counter-culture” to be against war. One news website, The American Conservative , is a Right-leaning news organization, whose authors mainly oppose American interventionism. The "...