“we do not see…reality…as ‘it’ is, but as our languages are”

While reflecting on Thursday’s discussion about rhetoric and epistemology, I came across this and thought I’d share:

“The potential integration of text, images, and sounds in the same system, interacting from multiple points, in chosen time (real or delayed) along a global network, in conditions of open and affordable access, does fundamentally change the character of communication. And communication decisively shapes culture, because, as Postman writes, ‘we do not see…reality…as “it” is, but as our languages are’…Because culture is mediated and enacted through communication, cultures themselves—that is, our historically produced systems of beliefs and codes—become fundamentally transformed, and will be more so over time, by the new technological system.”

[ Castells :: The Rise of the Network Society (pp. 356-357) ]