Advancements in media technology are now becoming the calibration marks for history's major paradigmatic shifts. "Mediology," even, is a recognized and ever-expanding field of study. French radical theoretician, Regis Debray, for instance, proposes three historical ages of transmission technologies: the logosphere (the age of writing, technology, kingdom, and faith), the graphosphere (the age of print, political ideologies, nations and laws), and the newly born videosphere (the age of multimedia broadcasting, models, individuals, and opinions).
Though these temporal strata have not been widely accepted, Debray's work exemplifies the fact that the technologies of transmission have taken on a position in our culture of vertiginous power --- almost omnipotence --- as media now get credit for shaping not only to the information we distribute and consume, but our powers of perception, our political, social and economic systems, and our general constructions of truth.
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