Landow's Second Law of Media — No Free Lunch

Everything has a cost. Every medium, every technology brings with it advantages and disadvantages. There is always loss as well as gain.

Consider the example of writing: Writing permits asynchronous communication. Because it does not base the act of communication upon presence, it does not require the person communicating to be in either the same place or the same time as the person receiving the communication. The one communicating information places it in a form that permits someone else to receive it later. Writing, printing, cinema, and video are all forms of asynchronous communication.

Advantage1: Writing's asynchronisity allows time for careful thought.

Advantage2: Writing's fixity permits preservation of information not possible in orality, which requires formulaic thinking.

But these advantages come at a cost.

Disadvantage1: Writing is fixed, dead, and does not permit synchronous communication. (Though mobile-phone texting and Internet Chat succeed fairly well in drawing upon some of the advantages of both wriitng and speech.)

Disadvantage2: Writing is obviously mediated communication.

Which brings us to . . .