Laws of Media: Reverses

When an artifact gets pushed to an extreme, what is the result? While the most common extreme is too much (of a good thing), the other extreme is too little. Take a look at both when composing a tetrad.

Let's look at a few examples:

Automobile pushed to extreme is traffic jams or smog.

Refigerator pushed to extreme is frozen food.

Candy eaten to extreme is sick stomach or obesity.

email pushed to extreme is spam.

For artifacts that are understood this is an easy question to answer. For new innovations this can be very difficult to determine.

In the lifecyle of artifacts, it reverse towards the end. Interesting, the reversal is usually a problem that it solved with another artifact which obsolesces the tired artifact.

[Glad we have reversals otherwise we'd have a tyranny by an artifact.]

"Global Village" introduces chiasmus when discussing reverses area [GV p. 139]. Barrington Nevitt alsu uses this word in describing reversal. WIMM p 264

• Enhances
• Obsolesces
• Retrieves
• Reverses
• Tuning Tetrads