W3

Discuss the importance of "supervening necessity" - can you think of other examples?
According to Chapter three, it points out that the supervening necessity of speaking telephone is the limited liability company. Under my explanation, I would say that is a kind of change of social systems, industry standard or the rising needs of something. For example, if the science has idealized to the technology already, what kind of necessity is important to push this technology to the next stage “invention” or even “diffusion”? That is definitely related to the market scale. During the baby-booming generation after world war, the consumer needs were a big deal. In other words, they bought what they need such as food and clothes. In contract, if people live nowadays need information and the business can provide it matching their needs, the technology will keep moving forward and be adopted. Therefore, supervening necessity plays a key role in the development of the new technology without doubts.

Do you agree the cassette is an old-school thing? In my childhood, a music store such as Towers Record always displayed plenty of cassettes or discs. However, with the standard changed and following the portable and convenient wants of the consumers, we no longer use the cassette. Old-school technologies such as MD, Dos are weeded out partly because the trend of the industry. Another main reason is they cannot fulfill the consumers. So here comes some points, technologies are all possible to be taken over. How to predict and understand what the future is in the industry is more critical and needs time to dig out.
What about the law of unintended consequences?
Firstable, I want to make sure that we both have the similar understanding of “the Law of Unintended Consequences”. From Wikipedia Encyclopedia, the Law of Unintended Consequences holds that almost all human actions have at least one unintended consequence. Another way of saying this is that each cause has more than one effect, including unforeseen effects. For instance, scientists alter the genes of crops and the original idea is to help people to get enough nutrition. These days the effects of genetically-modified foods are still unknown, but this issue has already caused arguments. And back to the aspect of technology, it is never one-sided in terms of technology giveth and taken away. You never know. Remember the movie ”the butterfly effect”, who can tell a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear?
How might U&G theory apply to your research this quarter?
There are three hypotheses in U&G Theory: the audiences are active, they look for the media that can fill their bills and the media can satisfy their needs. Related to my topic this quarter “the impact of the new service (podcasting) on the NPR audiences”, I will apply both U &G and Diffusion of Innovation. Find out few questions:
1. Will NPR audience search podcasting on their initiative?
2. what kind of original audience of NPR will use the podcasting service and which program will they be interested in?
3. Will the audiences adopt the new podcasting service that NPR offers?
4. Which kind of adopters are the audiences of NPR?What is the present stage of NPR in AIETA Model?