Media Technologies: How far have we come?

We’ve been discussing media technologies in class this week. Since media is dependent on different technologies in order to spread its message at all, I think this is a good place to start when considering communication at all. Without some form of technology, even very simple ones, we’re stuck with word of mouth. This isn’t to say that spoken communication is weak, just that it is very limited! The human voice is only so powerful, so even addressing large groups of people verbally can be difficult. Before the advent of mass-produced printing, we depended first on painters, then scribes, and then engravers to provide us with information. Literacy was not a common skill, mainly because the resources needed to develop it were very scarce. Most people had neither the time nor the money to become literate, but the skill was not much in demand, either. It is only after the invention of the printing press that books and other documents became readily available, and it became much easier for the common person to become literate. With this increase in literacy came a huge increase in knowledge, and it could be said that the invention of the press led directly to the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.

Today, at least in many countries, we take literacy for granted. It’s considered one of the basic life skills, and is taught from the first days of school. We should never forget, though, that less than 700 years ago, it was something to be admired.

After printing, what was the next big change? In the late 19^th century, Guglielmo Marconi began transmitting radio signals over longer and longer distances, eventually creating a network of “wireless telegraphy” stations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In the beginning, these stations were used for ship-to-shore communication, and were later used to compete with the transatlantic telegraph service. Eventually, this technology was improved further and further, and the equipment necessary was made smaller and more efficient, and its utility as a means of communication were fully realized. In addition to entertainment potential, news and information could be broadcast to anyone in the transmission area who had a receiver. By the Great Depression, the United States government had realized the strengths of the system, and President Roosevelt made extensive use of radio in order to communicate with the population in general. Radio continues to be a major part of our communication system.

The invention of the television, the next great change in communication, is actually earlier than a lot of people realize. The first real work towards transmitting images wirelessly began in 1884, with patents issued to Paul Nipkow for his electromechanical system. The first televisions used large spinning disks with a series of holes to produce images on a screen. These images were very rough, very small, and very difficult to make. The initial inventions showed the potential of the idea, and research continued, until in 1928 Philo Farnsworth demonstrated the first all-electrical television system. Television took over where radio left off, and provided an even greater amount of information and entertainment to the general public. In most of society, television has become a ubiquitous presence, and has gone so far as to become an accepted part of the background. It has become odd to enter a building and not see a TV. The sheer amount of information that can be broadcast, and the number of stations that are available, made television one of the defining factors of the 20^th century as a whole.

I have been fortunate to be a part of the next sea change in communication, the development of data networking and the Internet. As I started my career in technology, the potential of the Internet was just being realized by the general public. While it was originally developed by DARPA to provide links between universities and military installations, data networking has advanced to be the backbone of an information revolution that I feel rivals the printing press. We are now able to communicate faster, and have access to more information, than ever before. Email, web browsing, and social networking have given us a level of information access that it unprecedented. In as little as twenty years, the Internet has changed vast areas of society. As access becomes more widespread, and we build more and more bandwidth for transmission, we will see more and more changes to how we work and communicate. News and information can reach us faster than ever before, especially now that Internet access is common on many people’s mobile phones and ultra-portable tablet PCs. Modern smartphones are more powerful than the computers I used less than twenty years ago. As this technology continues to advance, I think we will see an ongoing revolution in how we communicate.