I might be misunderstanding their point here, but I cant really distinguish between modern media and older static media such as paintings and books. Don't we all know novels are just stories, but we get absorbed in it and sometimes worry about the characters?
1. if the equation means: people react to media in "somewhat similar way" as they react to other people:
I think this phenomena of giving a character or personality to objects/things other than human, is not a new phenomena. Also I believe that it is not a 0 or 1 thing. We do it all the time, in various levels. I have seen (moderately normal)people name things, assign them characters even talk in their behalf. When the "thing" gets more complicated(respond in some way or show signs of intelligent) or they are human-like in appearance(dolls, things with faces ..), more people tend to do this. At the end everything has a character even based on simples features such as colour and shape. A red triangle is "dangerous" and a blue circle is calm and friendly. And based on that our reaction to them is different.2. If this equation says that people respond to media not in "similar" way but the "same" way as they do to people:
then I don't really agree with it. We even might in some cases react exactly the same way, but it is not in all aspects. For example "do we get uncomfortable in front of tv or computer? to appear with the clothing that we wont like to be seen by other people? or when we do things that we don't want others to see?"
Then again it totally depends on the abilities of the media. Im sure if we had a judgmental tv with cameras and image recognition, to make fun of us when we are in our messy pajamas ; then we would feel uncomfortable sitting there : We react to things/people in the way they act(or the way they are). Same goes with people in coma/unconscious state; we dont react to them the same way as conscious people.
the rest is my notes on the article, the answer to question 3 ends here.
Computer skills:
-basic web design: javascript, html, css
-some old programming skills: java, shell, perl..
-some prototyping: axure
on "Old Brains Flooded by New Technologies"
I better read the original document of Reeves and Nass on this, BUT: why they brought evolution to the discussion in the first place? It was going relatively soundly before this section jumped in, destroyed the flow of logic in the text and left me confused: " why they brought evolution to the discussion in the first place?"
So do they really mean that if evolution was faster, or technology was slower; we would have adapted to it so that we could recognise it from reality and would not respond to media as we do now?
Well, it is really hard to tell what would happen if this or that, but now that we are speculating, lets speculate!: Evolution generally serves as a mechanism for survival. living things adapt and change to improve their chance of living. The question here is what is the survival benefit of detecting media as fake?
Lets take dreams for an example. Dreams are something quite similar to media in that sense: it looks real but it is not. We are dreaming for long enough I guess that if there was a need, we would have developed an ability to realise that it is a dream. but so far we still perceive it as very real while experiencing it.
Moral: not everything that was around long enough, is worth evolutionary action!
on "Source Credibility"
lets start by saying that I don't buy the labeling computers as "news" and "entertainment" in ''source credibility" argument. I think it does not have much to do with people finding TVs or computer's person like that they are influenced by labels. Similar effects is seen when different colour of packaging is used or a nicer package makes the user feel or evaluate the product as "better quality". I bet one could see a similar result by tagging a screwdriver as "professional" and other as "household". People would start reporting all sorts of better performance from "professional" one.
"Who is the source of information" experiment under the same "source credibility" section is also a bit shaky. Experiment shows that people's evaluation of helpfulness, friendliness etc. is different when they make then think about programmer as the source. but why it is different and does that prove that people initially think of computer itself as source? Dont get me wrong I dont oppose the idea but the experiment only.
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