Hello Maciej, I would also add: "Internet itself is not one single medium but an agglomerate of different methods and technologies working to create what can be considered a hyper-media, or a channel used by many other media to transmit messages or simulated the most diverse communication processes... Internet can be considered the newspaper without the press and paper, the Television without the TV set, the radio without waves, and the face-to-face interaction without the real and physical encounter between two or more parts. Internet is its own thesis and antithesis, without fully presenting a synthesis, as the Hegelian dialectic would expect. The synthesis is only reached by the direct intervention of the social actor the audience and it will produce not just one final outcome but diverse results according to different inputs and stimulus. Take for instance the use of electronic mail (e-mail). It communicates something, what can be concretely represented by a written message between two or more people. The same message could also be transmitted by other method such as an online discussion board, however the e-mail and the discussion board methods would have totally different outputs for the same transmitted message, including privacy issues, response time, objectivity, context, etc." - Journal of International Cultural Studies N.13, Tohoku University, Japan (p.312 and 313) Aristides
From: "Maciej Kos" <kos@gnu.univ.gda.pl> Reply-To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] is Internet a '"source" or a "medium"? - ignorant's question Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2007 11:06:09 +0100
Dear All,
Please excuse my ignorant question about the difference in meanings between a "source" and a "medium". Even though I would really like to study Information science or Communications [and with God's help I will], I haven't yet had any opportunity to do so and what I know is based on papers freely available online as well as in Elsevier's database. My background is Economics. To make things worst, I am not a native speaker.
I was reading a paper written by a colleague of mine and noticed that she uses two words: a "medium" and a "source" as synonyms. For her the Internet is both a source and a medium of information.
According to the Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science a "medium" is
"information storage and retrieval, the physical substance or material on which data is recorded (parchment, paper, film, magnetic tape or disk, optical disk, etc.) or through which data is transmitted (optical fiber, coaxial cable, twisted pair, etc.). In a more general sense, the material or technical means by which any creative work is expressed or communicated, in print or nonprint format (...)". http://lu.com/odlis/odlis_m.cfm
while a "source" is
"Any document that provides information sought by a writer, researcher, library user, or person searching an online catalog or bibliographic database. Also refers to a document that provides information copied or reproduced in another document, for example, a quotation or excerpt." http://lu.com/odlis/odlis_s.cfm
The same dictionary states that the "Internet" is a "The high-speed fiber-optic network of networks"; so it is not a "document that provides information (...)"
However, I came across a lot of publications where the authors seem not to distinguish between "medium" and "source".
As I said, I am not a native speaker - could you tell, if these two meanings have merged and I am simply pedantic or shall I follow the above definitions? Or perhaps there is a reason for using these to words as synonyms? Could you explain it to me, please ?
Kind regards, Maciej
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