The reading revolves around the relevance of the main idea of Ithiel de Sola Polo’s piece, Technologies Without Borders. The discussed repercussions of a strong connection between society and technology are thoroughly analyzed to conclude their existence in the modern world (Putnam, 1995). In other words, the writing focuses on Sola Polo’s predictions about the impact of electronic development on people, culture, social structure, and evolution. Overall, it investigates the disappearance of social capital in America caused by technology and sources of mass information in relation to Sola Polo’s work.
The conclusions mainly summarize the findings regarding Sola Polo’s opinion on the effect of technology on people, but the text instead focuses on irrelevant data, in my opinion. For instance, the evidence is mainly the statistics about media usage in different settings, various age and race groups, and membership trends, which do not necessarily seem relevant to the topic (Putnam, 1995). Unfortunately, even the existing evidence is not linked to the idea of social capital and its disappearance in the USA, which makes me question the reason for including the graphs in the reading. Overall, the supporting arguments are not relevant to the topic as they do not correspond to the primary objectives highlighted in the book.
Having gotten familiar with the reading, it is safe to claim that the reading provides only a brief overview of the social capital concept and does not further elaborate on the topic. That is why it seems only fair to ask for the development of the matter at hand so that the primary aspects can be analyzed. It seems fitting to ask the author about the choice of the statistics to include and why one established the connection to Sola Polo’s work and not maintained it throughout the article.
Reference
Putnam, R. D. (1995). Tuning in, tuning out: The strange disappearance of social capital in America. Political Science and Politics, 28(4), 664–683. Web.