“Every non physical network requires a physical network for its delivery.” quoted from Network Fever.

When my Cantonese-speaking grandfather was young, he lived in a small village. Their accent was a little bit different with others. Actually every village has its own accent, so when people met in a city, they knew where are each others from. After the television spreads into families, it changed. The people who speak a standard accent on the television was seemed urbanized which is fashion and elegant, in contrast, speaking in village accent seemed obsolete and out of date, so people started to imitate the “city accent” on television. Several decades later, now those different accents are no longer exist.

I think some other similar things also happen in many ways. Technology creates a new network which covers our daily life and shrinks our world, it makes diversity more obvious and at the same time somewhat kills the diversity. This can be relates to the Excerpts from The Railway Journey, the aura thing.

As many articles mentioned the transportation is a prosthetic of human being, I don’t think that’s true. A prosthetic is an alternative object which corresponds our original function, our innate organs such as feet and hands. However, automobiles and television are the other thing, they are not replacing out feet and mouth, they are extension, the function is totally different with what we have. Is this “extension” as network kills the diversity? Sometime I really think so. But in other words, without this “extension,” we won’t know this world any much more than our ancestor. It is the network , the “extension” makes us see the difference in diversity, so that we have a chance to look deep in it and appreciate it.