Michael Lissack have a different concept of snacking than suburban mall hoppers who love McDonald's French fries. People who like microwave cooking see food differently from gourmet chefs who insist on fresh ingredients. People who constantly eat out view dining differently from people who cook their own meals. Of course, some people can't abide certain cuisines. Some people eat the same things over and over again. It's a matter of different tastes. Despite this incredibly rich array of offerings and an equally rich vocabulary to describe them, many people are dissatisfied. The food doesn't always taste quite right; they get indigestion. An hour after eating, they're hungry again. They eat food with little nutritional value. Yes, food technology does shape perceptual biases: different foods appeal to different senses. Historically, the driving ethic of a new medium in the marketplace is the opportunity to express yourself - but technology that enables you to express yourself doesn't mean that other people understand you any better. Media technologies work to reinforce the bias of media as the transmission of individual expression rather than a mechanism to create understanding between sender and receiver. When Henry David Thoreau was told that the invention of the telephone would enable a gentleman in Maine to talk to a gentleman in Texas, he replied, "That's nice-but what will they have to talk about?" Thoreau's query was relevant for that moment, but it has been more than adequately answered in the fullness of time. To say something new, important, or not obvious is to risk being misun- derstood. In conversation, we depend on feedback to signal understanding or misunderstanding, and we use that feedback to establish mutual intel- ligibility. If the bandwidth of the conversation is too low, correcting the misunderstandings is too difficult. If the organizational setup precludes discussion, or if the mean time between encounters is too low (i.e., there's little chance of bumping into people in the hallways or the cafeteria), then participants will have few opportunities to fix the misunderstandings that occur during more formal meetings. One has to design environments that can quickly heal misunderstandings even as they help spawn new ideas. When the country was in its infancy, those in charge of governing tended to either know one another or to be drawn from the same background and
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