Questions or maybe thoughts

Poster: Obviously dated (mid-90s) as we read it now there was something that most struck me about this article and that was pretty early on. He says "In the recent past the only technology that imitates the telephone's democratic structure is the Internet...." (p. 535) Noting that more and more people were using the internet by the mid-90s than earlier forms of the more limited access Internet. However, keeping in mind his vague idea that the Internet would continue to be revolutionized, I wonder to whom is Internet access "democratic" in the early 21st century? Evidence points to broadband access being problematic in two major ways. A: Limited access to providers in rural areas. B: Cost.

Baudrillard: The author asserts that there are realities and perceptions of it from what I could understand of these sentences with too many prepositional phrases for my taste. However, my background in historic preservation/museum studies was alerted then I read his commentary on repatriation of artifacts. He considered it a activity where people act "as if nothing had happened and" indulge "in retrospective hallucination (p. 460)." I am reminded of the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (1990) in which cultural institutions were forced to review their collection and see what objects in it were related to American natives and inform the nearest surviving tribe (or to exhaust themselves in the possibility of finding a tribe in light of the practices in dealing with American natives). Do you believe the government and museum compliance with such is really them acting as if nothing happened? How can museums without these artifacts still (if relevant to their mission anyway) be honest about poor collections management and overt racist ideology in the past? Is this necessary?

Haltman: Did anyone else feel the human characteristics of the candlestick phone were stretched? I don't know, it just didn't resonate with me. One question that is outside of the candlestick phone's era is if people hid candlestick phones in cabinets and under hollow dolls (which to me made the phone thing more phallic in design) then to what degree was this unnecessary with the French phone? Were increasing numbers of people more comfortable with the phone?