GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES BY SIR JOHN

HERSCHEL, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c

At the Cape of Good Hope

The New York Sun recently published an article on the great

telescope invented by astronomer, Sir John Herschel, the
complete details of which can be found in the Edinburgh Journal
of Science. Dr. Andrew Grant, the amanuensis of Sir Herschel, said
that the telescope, currently housed in the Observatory of South
Africa, was able to magnify the dark side of the moon and
ascertain that there is life beyond earth. The “immense telescope
of an entirely new principle” was able to record images of fruit
trees, bodies of water, bison goats, tail-less beavers, and what
could possibly be horned-horses, known in mythology as unicorns.
The most fascinating discovery made through the telescope is
the bat-like winged humanoid called the vespertilio-homo (Latin.
“man-bat”). These beings “were of infinitely greater personal
beauty,” like angels. The Herschel team reported that these
lunarians were “both erect and dignified” and “lived without
apparent strife.”
 Japanese RADIO WVTR
Post-Earthquake Broadcast

After the recent 7,5 magnitude earthquake and very

deep tremors were felt offshore in Tokyo yesterday at 8:46
a.m., the English-language armed-forces radio station, WVTR,
interrupted its regular music programming for an emergency
bulletin. According to Corporal James Carnahan of Chicago,
who is currently assigned in Tokyo, the tremors caused the
sea to pull back the water in a great heave. There emerged,
from the depths, a monstrous sea creature that resembled a
dragon. Japanese and American troops aided one another
in fending off the creature with high-powered weapons,
flamethrowers, grenades, phosphorous bombs, and tanks,
but the creature continued inland toward Tokyo city proper,
destroying buildings and vehicles along the way. In the live
radio boradcast, the pandemonium could be heard, but the
lines were suddenly cut, and no new information was
broadcasted again.
 comes from the

media Latin word

“medius” which
means “middle”

plural form of
“medium”

“Media are responsible for the information that they disseminate.”

“Media is trying to influence us all the time.”

 Mass communication

Mass media
achieved currency in
the late 19th century
and early 20th
centuries
 George Gerbner,
employing “cultivation”
analysis in his research,
found out that people with
prolonged exposure to
television tend to view the
world as dangerous and
tend to mistrust other
people.

“mean world syndrome”

media comes from the
Latin word
“medius” which
means “middle”

plural form of
“medium”

means “means”
It is a method, instrument, and
agency, at the same time that it is
a container that holds together
something.
 Because media is so powerful,
many people want to use it.
Some want to use it to affirm
life, while others to negate it.
 comes from the Greek word

technology ‘technologia’ means the

systematic (logia) application of
art or knowledge (techne)

People, in this sense, are media. You are a

medium. When people continue to pass on or
perpetuate certain knowledge or arts, which
they have received from others and acquired
by learning, they become part of a technology,
they become technological.
Says Thamus, Says Theuth
Theuth: Here is an
accomplishment…”writing”… which will
improve both the wisdom and the memory
of the Egyptians.

King Thamus: It will not help the people with

their memory but instead it will make them
more forgetful since they will rely now on
writing to remember something and now on
internal way of remembering things. It will
not give people wisdom but instead only a
“quantity of information”
Ray Bradbury’s
dystopian novel,
Fahrenheit 451
(1953), paints a
speculative future
in which firemen
no longer put out
fire but instead
set fire to books.
 pictures people as being
preoccupied by “little
seashells” packed with
“thimble radios” that give
out the sound of the music,
and talk, as well as by inane
dramas shown through
“parlor walls” that function
as screens
 Guy Montag
fireman; protagonist
in the novel Granger
 While Thamus criticizes the
1 media capacity of writing,
Bradbury promotes the
importance of books. But
Bradbury does not exactly
refer to the idea of books as
written materials. What is
Bradbury trying to say
exactly?
 Bradbury was aware of the
historical events when books were 2
actually banned, burned, or
destroyed, such as the destruction
of the Library of Alexandria, the
burning of books by Nazis, and the
killing of authors and poets in
Russia. Speculate on how this
awareness helped Bradbury
envision people as media, people
as technology.
 If you were part of the
3 wilderness community that
memorizes, embodies, and
mediates books, which book
would you like to be?
 well-kept maiden; of Panay
is a woman consecrated
from childhood to be the
bearer of the community’s
age-old wisdom, especially
its epics and lore

indicates the state of being

confined and separated

suggests blanketing or
being blanketed

binukot Trains in the art of chanting and,

through the years, becomes
(bukot) repository of her community’s
traditions and identity
&
Mediation
means that ideas, knowledge
and reality can only be
encountered in their materially
contained form

Mediatization
means that media—from hereon no
longer in the sense of “people as
media,” but in the sense of mechanical
and electronic media technologies has
come to historically and materially
dominate society
 Years prior to the turn of the 21st
century, rumors spread that the
Millennium Bug or the Y2K Bug will
end the world on January 1, 2000.
Supposedly, digital computers and
software, on which mediatized
societies are dependent, will not
be able to distinguish between the
years “2000” and “1900,” and the
shutdown of information systems
will result in chaos. We are still here.
Marshall McLuhan
theorist

his aphorism:
“the medium is the
message”
print

motion picture (also film or

cinema)

broadcast (including radio and

television)
 is the earliest of these traditional
media types to have been
Print invented
media
introduced books of all sorts,
from religious to scholarly to
artistic texts. This includes
newspapers, tabloids,
magazines, tracts, pamphlets,
posters and others.
like print media, made possible
new worlds, gave way to still
newer forms of knowing.
Motion
reworked the relationship
between time and space
picture

can copy “reality” in the way

that photography and the other
arts cannot
 to broadcast simply means to
send one-way signals to an
Broadcast unknown number of receivers
media through a device

Radio listening, as such,

approximated aspects of oral
culture.
 Hot Media Cool Media
is high in spells out less
informational information and
encourages more
content and
interaction from
invites low the media
participation consumer
 in the so-called
traditional mass
media, no
interaction among
those co-present can
take place between
Niklas Luhmann sender and receivers
sociologist
 achieved currency in the mid-
1990s with the rise of the internet,
and this context should help us
appreciate the difference
between traditional and
emerging media.

technically refers to a worldwide

network of computers that use
the same telecommunication
protocol(TCP/IP, i.e., “transmission
control protocol/Internet
protocol”).