Media

Media can be subdivided into two categories: mass (newspapers, magazines/journals,
theater, films, radio, television, the World Wide Web, books, CDs, DVDs,
videocassettes, audiocassettes, and other forms of publishing) and personal (personal
speech, telephone, mail, e-mail, etc.). Before the technologies of the twentieth
century, only books, magazines/journals, newspapers, theater, direct speech, and
written mail existed as media forms. Before the printing press, the offerings were
even more limited: direct speech, theater, manuscripts (hand-written texts). Douglas Galbi
postulates that the rise in media consumption in twentieth-century society is directly
related to the increase in discretionary time. As the workweek reduces, media
consumption increases to fill the remaining time. Even if your workweek is longer,
an ever-increasing number of employees have media readily accessible at the desktop
via the Internet, television, or radio.