Task 12 of NIE: Tool or medium?

First of all I'd like to note that the source text this time was one of the hardest one´s I´ve read so far (in the meaning of understanding the message of the author).

While Rückriem states in the end, that computer technology (and everything introduced by it) can be seen both as a medium or a tool (depending on one´s point of view), I firmly believe that it is a rapidly enhanced tool that now causes revolution in the society. The main reasons behind the revolution are its speed, accessibility and widespread (low-cost).

For digital technology to be a medium itself, I would expect it to introduce a new way of communication to the human mind (like television did) - however today digital technology simply ties all the old mediums together, doing it fast and seamlessly. Of course this is convenient and revolutionizing, but for me it isn't a new way of "mediating", but rather a rethought way of instruments offered so far for communication.

When theoretizizing about the statement made that “supplying people with guns creates a social world quite different from world in which people are disarmed” and putting this to a context where a gun is for example a internet-access, I still have to argue that internet, digital technology will not create a new world. It would be as "supplying people with automatic-guns creates a social world quite more different from world in which people are with non-automatic guns". Yes automatic guns will revolutionize warfare (or digital technology the communication), but wars would still exists and battles be fought (communication in its essence stays the same).


One might now ask, was then the introduction of television with the same effect - no. Television for communication was what a-bomb was for warfare - on the politics of warfare (communication) new threats and opportunities were introduced.


Source
http://www.iscar.org/fi/ruckriem.pdf