Instant news and constant contact
One of the amazing things which has happened to human communications over the past 100 years or so is how quickly news from one part of the world can be passed on to other places. We have become accustomed to instant news even from the other side of the world. We think nothing of hearing of an assassination in Egypt within minutes of it happening, and we may know that a bad earthquake is happening in Japan even before the shaking stops. Looking back just 200 years or so of the long thousands of years history of humanity, news could not be passed on quickly across the world as has become possible in our very recent times. For thousands of years before, news had to be passed along by written documents like letters, delivered by carriers over long distances on land or on sea, or maybe passed on by word-of-mouth by messengers who traveled the long distances to carry the news where it would be shared.
We can attribute the speedy communications first to electrical gadgets such as the telegraph, which made use of intermittent bursts of electricity to transmit a symbolic language of dots and dashes over wires strung over long distances. Each telegraph message took time to transmit, as the sending operator tapped the contacts at the right intervals to create the bursts of current representing dots and dashes, then at the other end the receiving operator had to translate the bursts of current into regular language and to write out the message coming over the wire. It was far better than having to travel across country to pass on a message, but of course still quite slow by our 21st century standards. The invention of the telephone, making possible the transmission of the human voice and other sounds over long distances, was a great advance in speeding up communication, making it nearly immediate. But for sending out news and messages to a great, widespread audience, the growth of network radio broadcasts, especially in the early 20th century, was a huge advance.
I think we often don’t appreciate how hugely the technology for transmitting messages by radio signals has impacted and sped up our communications, including in our day of advanced TV and cell phone and smart phone communications. For example, a television is a glorified radio. Even a digital television is a glorified computerized radio. In fact, a digital television signal can be likened to the old dot-dash system of an old-time telegraph, except that instead of bursts of dots and dashes, the digital signal over the air-waves is a system of ons and offs used to provide usable information for electronic receivers which work to translate it, picture it and sound it for us. A cell phone or smart phone is more of a computerized radio than it is a telephone. The traditional telephone is an over-the-wire device for transmitting the human voice. But a cell phone is a computerized radio for transmitting the human voice or texting symbols or graphical information over the air waves. Our electronic gadgets may be new, but radio waves have been around as long as creation has existed. We humans didn’t invent radio waves; we are just now learning to utilize them in new ways.
Not only do we today seem to relish the availability of instant news; but over the last 20 years or so we seem to be growing ever more obsessed with the availability of constant contact, as made possible by our electronic devices. I’m beginning to wonder not only how much time we commonly spend on our hand-held devices, but also how much time we spend off and away from our electronic marvels. An older fellow like myself, who has in some measure tried to keep up with advancing communications technologies, is likely to be amazed and surprised at how huge the practices of texting and Twittering have become in today’s world. Even our political campaigns are being influenced by Twitter.
Often as groups of people sit down together at a restaurant one of the first things you see them doing is checking their phones. Apparently talking together across the table can wait, while each one checks their emails, the latest posts by their Facebook friends, and their latest Instagrams. Are our electronic marvels really improving our communications? Or, are they eroding the quality of our person-to-person communications and relationships? I come from an attitude that face-to-face communication should nearly always take priority over media or electronic communications, and that finding oneself driven to stay in constant contact over electronic gadgets has a detrimental effect on our humanity as we share the earth together.
Strangely, some of us appreciate quiet time, thinking time, a bit of undisturbed musing time, some off the phone time, some solitude, some time away from the nerve-wracking noise of our gadgets; so folks like myself may be a bit prejudiced regarding this drive for constant contact and constant electronic entertainment. But in defense of our attitude, we like to see fine technologies used in ways that refine and help our human relationships; and we regret to see technologies numbing people’s sensibilities, becoming detrimental to our social courtesies and considerations, and allowing cyber relationships to take priority over real firsthand relationships.
••• Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@centurytel.net, or call 621-1621.