I wrote this in December, 2006, and sent it out to family and friends on Christmas Eve.
ak
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'Tis the season to write about religious holidays.
Invisible airwaves crackle with life;
Bright antennae bristle with the energy.
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength,
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free.
- Neil Peart, "The Spirit of Radio"
Mass Communication
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Greek Runners
Roman Mail
1450 - Printing Press
European Rail System
1837 - Telegraph
1876 - Telephone
1892 - Long Distance
1899 - Fax Machine
1929 - Television
1962 - Telstar
1972 - eMail
1973 - Cellular Telephone
1974 - The Internet
1991 - The World Wide Web
1999 - Wireless Broadband
***
No matter which criteria you use to chart the "evolution of society," there is no question but that things change, the pace of change always has changed, and the technologies of mass communication both enable and engender change. By the early 19th century, the latest batch of technologies had reached a state of equilibrium with society. With publishing, horses, trains, and trans-oceanic ships working in concert, the first era of mass communication was winding down, almost 400 years after its start in 1450.
The next chapter was short, maybe as a forward to what was to come, and began with a click. The telegraph was a tantalizing peek into the future, instantly made "instant" a new part of the nature of communication, and sparked a paradigm shift of intercontinental proportions. But it was the telephone which altered the core of personal communication for the first time: Instant, Two-way, Personal, Voice - a long-distance grand slam 10,000 years in the making. Now, if we could just get rid of all those wires...
Missing from the historical list above is the thing which began the second era of mass communication - radio. It removed the physical limitations of all previous communication structures. From Caruso and Sinatra to The Mercury Theatre of the Air and "Oh, the humanity!", radio unlocked (or unleashed) the power of the shared experience.
The hard-wired telephone survived for 97 years because the technology was so elagantly simple. Television was neither elegant nor simple, and was useless unless wireless. "See It Now" with Edward R. Murrow, "...one small step for (a) man...", M-TV with The Buggles, and Tienneman Square with the faxes vs. the tanks - these images made the 20th century the "television century." But it is the science of radio which carries the ideas that move the world.
On April 3rd, 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola placed the world's first portable, non-automotive cell phone call to his car-phone rival at ATT, Joel Engel. Practical cell phones were ten years away, but this one phone call was the beginning of the end for the wire and all it represented. In the same way Edison's light bulb broke the millennia-old bond between light and fire, Cooper's cell phone used radio to sever the last bond between communication and location.
Cell phones introduced this year (2006) have high-resolution color cameras and can record several minutes of full-motion video with sound. The video can be transmitted instantly to anyone, anywhere in the world, or uploaded instantly to a web page where it is available to *everyone* in the world, from a device which is completely wireless, smaller than a paperback book, and can run all day on one battery charge. While I'm sure there are many improvements to come, this convergence of wireless, text, voice, image, personal, and mass communication is the end of this chapter in the evolution of communication, and will both report and shape the next phase in the evolution of society.
"... Which brings us here." - James Burke
(image of David bowing down in the general direction of England)
100 years ago, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was a smart guy. Early on he was the principal, and the sole teacher, at the Whitney Institute in Bermuda. Later, he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Purdue, and the first department Chair of Electrical Engineering at what is now Pitt. A one-time Edison assistant, he quit because he couldn't stand Edison's non-science approach to, well, science. With over 500 patents (second only to Edison), his achievements remain almost completely unknown even in technological circles, except for one.
On December 24th, 1906, at 10:30 PM EST, at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, Reginald Fessenden made the first voice radio broadcast.
His transmission was picked up by numerous ships at sea. Fantastic claims of "voices" coming from the radio sets led captains to suspect their radiomen of being drunk on duty. Reggie introduced himself, spoke briefly about his invention, read from the Bible, and played "O Holy Night" on his violin. Thus, at sea, began the second era of mass communication, "... a sea-change into something rich and strange."
So this Christmas Eve, at 10:30 PM EST, take out your cell phone, use it to track down an electrical engineer, and go kiss him right on the face.
Happy Birthday.
Merry Christmas.
ak