At the time of the idea, the play is still at the center of events, and the camera is at the periphery. And yet, as the performance begins, the parents are jockeying for camera angles, checking batteries, and squinting through viewfinders that are crowded with focusing and framing aids, exposure meters, and assorted other distractions. Computers can be just as impersonal and demanding. He looks at the social periphery, the ways that we use social or environmental knowledge in our approach to work and living. We decide whether or not to believe a person based on that person's reputation.
Technology often cuts out peripheral cues and knowledge.
Often, the information that gets lost is cultural. Once we begin filtering our news, we will no longer share the news with others. Brown's antidote to demassification is to use technology to form a distributed community, and to build tools to listen. Brown tells us that currently, we build tools to amplify the mind. So it is little wonder that we fail to understand our customer's needs, even with the best of information and the best of intentions.