Over the past weekend, I was having lunch with a dear friend at a cafe in Hollywood, and we were joined by her non-profit business partner and another member of their US based team trying to accomplish a very awesome and noble feat, opening a school for an under served and poor town in rural Mexico.
Technology: Good or Bad?
During our chat, we wandered onto the topic of technology and its very place in society. Essentially, the question was raised, are we better off now during the “digital age” or were we better off before the Internet and cell phones ruled our existence?
It was quite serendipitous, that the day prior, I had been working on a paper for a class that parts of which have been used here to outline my issues with their anti-tech stance.
Now, considering myself a “technologist” I believe that I am acutely aware and hyper-passionate about what technology has done for our civilization, while also realizing the possible negative aspects that it can hold over society. Therefore, I could not help myself but speak up on behalf of the positive changes we’ve witnessed over the last 2500 years due to human’s innovation with regard to new technologies, and lay the foundation for what I hope would begin to change their views on the future of our planet.
It was brought up that technology is simply a negative force in society, and we are destined for disaster because of our reliance on such smart devices–mainly the computer. That may be an oversimplification of the stance, but I was shocked by what I was hearing. After all, with people living longer, more people having access to medicine, clean water, sanitation and simply knowledge than ever before in written history, I was a bit put off, and I believe, rightfully so. Now at this point, I might have pointed to the fact that the source of power at the school will be solar (a huge advancement in innovation as of late) or that the gray water will be reused using technologically advanced cisterns, but I kept to basic concepts of history as I did not want to come off as attacking their stance on a superficial level.
Stakeholders vs. Shareholders
I also don’t want to minimize the grave issues we face on a global scale, as I think we have to make huge strides in order to ensure that everyone receives the aforementioned basic human rights, but I truly believe that technology is the route by which we will begin to meet those needs. And honestly, multinational tech firms are truly poised to answer that call, especially if governments are unable to or unwilling due to bureaucratic holdups. It is the era we live in, where corporate citizenry is realized by an interest in stakeholders, not just shareholders, and with that, they will move forward (and make a profit-as that is what they are in business for in the first place).
What really started this debate, was a comment about writing letters as opposed to email. One half of our party would much rather forgo the convenience of computers, which to me, was truly rooted in a nostalgic dream of more simplified times and resistance to the digital revolution, while ignoring what we’ve accomplished as a civilization because of technological advancement brought about in part by the invention of the microchip.
Revolution
When discussing these issues, and relating it to communication (and more broadly, mass communication) as my my lunch mates were, I would say that most experts agree that there were three technological revolutions that contributed to the “success” of our modern day society, and with it, the information age we find ourselves in today.
Within each of these revolutions, there were various societal and personal needs that had to be met, each of which built upon the previous era’s impact to bring about the ultimate level of mass communication that we see today, in digital form.
1. Phonetic Alphabet
First, the phonetic writing revolution met society’s need to create a medium to transmit messages, and store them for future consumption. Early written communication involved pictographs drawn on stones, and over the course of centuries, this method of communication developed into phonetic writing where people began to use symbols to represent sounds. In the text Media/Impact, Shirley Biagi says of the first communication revolution: “After being stored in written form, information could now reach a new kind of audience, remote from the source and uncontrolled by it.” Biagi continues, “writing transformed knowledge into information.”
Individuals needed to share their stories, and wanted to create a lasting history of what was important to them. These individuals made up communities and cultures that were then competing with one another for space in the timeline of the history of the world and cultures that were able to share their knowledge were able to grow beyond what previous generations could undertake. The technological revolution of the alphabet - although as much as I believe, was destined to take place - changed the face of human history.
As obvious as this is, prior to the alphabet, information had to be passed from father to son, mother to daughter, priest to disciple. Now, what was once only communicated face-to-face, could be written down and shared for generations. Students could study hand-written accounts and cultures could prosper because specialization was now truly possible. History could now be recorded for future consumption. It was the beginning of civilization as we know it today.
2. The Printing Press
The second technological revolution more specifically involved mass communication was the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440. This invention allowed for information to be shared quickly (respectively), cheaply (respectively) and on a much larger scale than permitted by handwritten manuscripts. Consider a book before the printing press: only those who could afford the luxury of a hand written book that took months to produce, and was often adorned with intricate jewels and illustrations, would become literate. In 1424, Cambridge University Library only owned “122 books each of which was equal to the cost of a farm or vineyard.”
Now, with the printing press, publishers could share information they chose to create or disseminate to many people, which led to increased literacy to the masses. This type of literacy meant that “the printing press was also a factor in the establishment of a community of scientists who could easily communicate their discoveries through the establishment of widely disseminated scholarly journals, helping to bring on the scientific revolution.”
The printing revolution meant that, for the first time, the needs of many individuals to share their experiences on a large scale was met, and society was forever moved. People could now have the same access to information that an elite few once held, and group discourse could bring about lasting change. With the invention of the printing press, the Biagi text comments, “for the first time, knowledge was portable, and storable.” A clear win for technological invention.
As the technology was enhanced, books grew smaller, information was relayed in new and exciting ways, newspapers, pamphlets, and mass discourse became possible, different cities could read the same information in multiple places at once, which was absolutely unheard of at the time. (Think Protestant Reformation)
It was truly the dawn of a new era.
3. The Digital Age
The Biagi text explains, “Storability, portability and accessibility of information are essential to today’s concepts of … communication. By definition, mass communication is information that is available to a large audience quickly.”
With the the printing press, information was portable and storable, but it was not as accessible as the third era, which has now come to be known as “The Digital Age.”
Accessibility means knowledge
This concept has become possible because of the invention of computers and networks of computers that are able to communicate effectively with one another. Again, that may be oversimplifying things, but for illustrative purposes, it helps communicate why technology is not the societal negative my lunch mates were led to believe. These networks have become synonymous with computers, cell phones, and the Internet, but in reality the true breakthrough was society’s ability to cheaply store large quantities of information and send that information throughout the world at breakneck speeds. The technological revolution of The Digital Age means that the information and knowledge — the “stuff” that we will use to solve the ills of society — is finally able to be shared in real time with anyone, and that is the true benefit of modern technology.
Each era, and with it, each medium of communication - spoken word, written word, printed word, or digital word - had it’s own history and impact, but the Internet and Digital Age are changing the way the world operates at an exponential rate. What was once took days to deliver, now takes milliseconds. News which was delivered at the speed of horseback can now be live-blogged, tweeted, emailed, or streamed to all areas of the planet in real time via any medium a producer wishes. Consumers are now producers, journalists are now citizen journalists and society is now benefiting from this change.
By default, all of this happened because of a need or innate human want to share the information or knowledge that they developed over time. And humans, by their definition, used technology to solve these basic desires.
Without technology, we would be no where as a civilization, and nostalgia serves only to hold back true innovation and progress.
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