Questions for readings due March 10th

1.)“Many Critics are worried that home computers will drive Western culture inward, making us unable to interact with others on an interpersonal level.” (Larsen). This statement makes me think specifically about the ‘Western culture’. When I think of western culture I think of Europe and America for the most part. The well developed countries that have strong financial backing. But would this progression of home computers dive the western world together but then drive apart the western world from the rest of the globe?
2.)“The mass media are the most effective channels to persuade people. Mass Media persuade us to buy products, to vote, and to take up causes. Why is this? One reason may be that there is only limited feedback in mass message systems (you cannot question, applaud, or respond), so certain ploys work that will not work in open arenas.” (Larsen). I think that this statement is not necessarily true today. With so many things online and so many ways for one person to respond to any particular situation they see on TV or hear on the radio, they have plenty of ways to express how they feel about something in the mass media. So my question is, is this statement true? Are we becoming just drains in mass media and taking what we hear and see for face value and believing in it? Or are we using our mass media resources to say what we think and get our opinion out there?
3.)“Indeed the written word came to be thought of as more trustworthy and more ‘magical’ than the spoken word.’ (Larsen) Do we still think this today? Just because something is written down does not make them trustworthy. Take Wikipedia into consideration, that is a site that is sometimes trustworthy and sometimes not, it just depends on the person that put the content up. So then spoken word would be just the same as written as far as the information goes, it would just be coming from a different media source. Does this still apply today with all the technology advancements or was this just a concept for back in the day when they had to have someone record the information verbally and it just became better to write it down than have the information be skewed?