Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Guest Blog
Here is a guest blog from someone my class to mix things up and provide a different perspective:
With the perpetual march of innovation, a common observation about technology today might note the increased demand, in many societies, for speed and efficiency. In the words of the character Brooks Hatlen from The Shawshank Redemption after he concludes a prison term spanning multiple decades: "The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry." In the field of communications, this is especially relevant. It is rather obvious that over time, methods of communication have become faster - the age of electronics has guaranteed that. Now however, we've begun to see a different trend: not just faster, but shorter. To be sure, communicating with shorter messages is just another way to speed things up, but there are larger implications.
The most well known example of this is text messaging. The use of brief text messages to replace phone calls has lead to some interesting trends, most notably, the development of shorthand slang in a wide variety of languages. This has sparked a debate between those who believe it to be harmful and those who scoff at such claims. I will not comment on how texting may be shaping people's approaches to writing itself, but I do believe that it reflects an ongoing trend in social interactions: many now prioritize brevity and speed over quality in their day-to-day online interactions.
A very relevant example of this is microblogging (no, it's not always Twitter). Here's what this post might look like if I were looking to be as brief as a Tweet: "Life's so fast; technology just keeps on picking up the pace. #whatsthehurry." For my purposes, a "post" like this is utterly inane. It illustrates a newer breed of "blogging" that caters to the needs of those who want rapidfire feedback; acting much more like a social networking service than a "traditional" blog. The website "tumblr.com" directly states in its information section that it is "to web blogging what text messages are to email." Twitter advertises itself as the "fastest, simplest way to stay close to everything you care about."
On the whole, the need for speed is perhaps explained best by the basic economising problem: infinite wants that are constrained by limited resources. The resource in this case is time. Mottos like "live life to its fullest" and "you only live once" reflect cultures which focus on getting as much done as possible within the time given. It's interesting then, that this mentality can be seen so clearly in the way we choose to communicate.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Important Innovations
People have been delivering messages to one another for thousands of years, and there have been many advancements in message delivery over the years. The oldest example that I can think of would be a messenger service that is often thought of when thinking about message delivery between monarchies. But since there are so many things innovations and inventions that I could talk about (papyrus, paper, the printing press, ect…) I am instead going to focus on just America, and how communication evolved.
The oldest form of message delivery would be a system or network of carriers riding stagecoaches led by horses. They would deliver the same things that are delivered now like letters and packages. A famous network would be the Pony Express. This network consisted of around 400 horses, 120 riders, and 184 stations and connected St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, a distance of about 1,900 miles. The cost of delivering anything was $5 per half-ounce, but the letter would get there in an astounding 10 days.
The next great innovation was the telegraph, which was invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1837, but it wasn’t put to widespread use until after 1844 when he completed a successfully telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C. Many of you are probably wondering how a telegraph works, and here’s how: there is a constant flow of electricity flowing through the wires, and each key stroke interrupts the current for a specific period of time and can be interpreted on the receiving end.
My guess is that about half of you are familiar with Alexander Graham Bell, and for those of you who aren’t, he’s the inventor of the telephone. It’s easy enough to see how the telephone revolutionized communication. Exchanges that use to take days could now be done in minutes because people to talk directly to one another. The number of phones in service skyrocketed over the years. Just two years after its invention, there were 10,000 phones in service. In 1948 there were 30,000,000 and in 1971 there were 100,000,000.
The last major innovation in communication was email. People can share files that they would not have been able to over the phone, and as a result, businesses began to function much more efficiently and cheaply because email is free and companies don’t have to pay for international mail or phone calls. The inventor of email is considered to be Ray Tomlinson in 1972 because he denoted the @ symbol as a way for a computer to recognize to send that information to another computer. Now there are over 600 million email users world-wide. As a result, fewer and fewer people are using the postal service and if the trend continues, mail may become obsolete.
The oldest form of message delivery would be a system or network of carriers riding stagecoaches led by horses. They would deliver the same things that are delivered now like letters and packages. A famous network would be the Pony Express. This network consisted of around 400 horses, 120 riders, and 184 stations and connected St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, a distance of about 1,900 miles. The cost of delivering anything was $5 per half-ounce, but the letter would get there in an astounding 10 days.
The next great innovation was the telegraph, which was invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1837, but it wasn’t put to widespread use until after 1844 when he completed a successfully telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C. Many of you are probably wondering how a telegraph works, and here’s how: there is a constant flow of electricity flowing through the wires, and each key stroke interrupts the current for a specific period of time and can be interpreted on the receiving end.
My guess is that about half of you are familiar with Alexander Graham Bell, and for those of you who aren’t, he’s the inventor of the telephone. It’s easy enough to see how the telephone revolutionized communication. Exchanges that use to take days could now be done in minutes because people to talk directly to one another. The number of phones in service skyrocketed over the years. Just two years after its invention, there were 10,000 phones in service. In 1948 there were 30,000,000 and in 1971 there were 100,000,000.
The last major innovation in communication was email. People can share files that they would not have been able to over the phone, and as a result, businesses began to function much more efficiently and cheaply because email is free and companies don’t have to pay for international mail or phone calls. The inventor of email is considered to be Ray Tomlinson in 1972 because he denoted the @ symbol as a way for a computer to recognize to send that information to another computer. Now there are over 600 million email users world-wide. As a result, fewer and fewer people are using the postal service and if the trend continues, mail may become obsolete.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Blogging
I have realized that up to this point, I have yet to talk about the means of communicating that I am using right now: blogging. While I disagree with the concept of blogging and it is still a medium through which ideas can be shared, and it also comes with some benefits.
It allows for a global perspective on the issues that a blogger writes about. People from all over the world can offer their own unique perspective on the issue, and propose ideas that may not have occurred to the writer. The Hindu that lives in India will have completely different ideas than the feminist that lives in the United States or a communist from China. It is this free-flow of ideas that lead to innovative solutions to complex problems that plague the world we live in. The comment tool available on each post enables contribution to this web to be easy and simple. By simply taking a few minutes to write a thoughtful comment you could propose your unique perspective.
One thing that has been beneficial about blogging is that it encourages more formal writing than in any other English class I have been in during my academic life. Usually, the only formal writing done in most English classes is the essay after finishing a novel, which is usually highly restrictive in terms of topics. With the limited amount of exposure to constructive comments and the amount of time between essays being quite lengthy, it becomes difficult to further develop writing skills since there isn’t the necessary practice that is required to improve at anything. The blog posts act as the practice. They help to break up the droughts of writing and maintain efficiency at a minimum.
This practice is also helpful in developing a distinct voice to your writing where the is the constant struggle between that informal style of a blog as well as carefully crafted language and sentences to accurately convey the message. I think I did an especially good job of this in my past post titled “Bacterial Communication.” There could have been a post riddled with complex terms and ideas that would have made sense to few but instead I chose to use a more dynamic voice to make the post more entertaining and dynamic instead of dense and dry which are commonly associated with scientific topics because of complex terms.
I still don’t enjoy blogging as a means of communication. It merges the public and private lives too much in my opinion. But, no matter how much I would rather not blog, I still realize that if I want to get better at communicating with others through writing I need to practice, and blogging is helping me practice. It’s like how at a young age parents are always telling their kids to eat their vegetables. No matter how much you may dislike the taste or texture, you must eat them anyway because they are good for you.
It allows for a global perspective on the issues that a blogger writes about. People from all over the world can offer their own unique perspective on the issue, and propose ideas that may not have occurred to the writer. The Hindu that lives in India will have completely different ideas than the feminist that lives in the United States or a communist from China. It is this free-flow of ideas that lead to innovative solutions to complex problems that plague the world we live in. The comment tool available on each post enables contribution to this web to be easy and simple. By simply taking a few minutes to write a thoughtful comment you could propose your unique perspective.
One thing that has been beneficial about blogging is that it encourages more formal writing than in any other English class I have been in during my academic life. Usually, the only formal writing done in most English classes is the essay after finishing a novel, which is usually highly restrictive in terms of topics. With the limited amount of exposure to constructive comments and the amount of time between essays being quite lengthy, it becomes difficult to further develop writing skills since there isn’t the necessary practice that is required to improve at anything. The blog posts act as the practice. They help to break up the droughts of writing and maintain efficiency at a minimum.
This practice is also helpful in developing a distinct voice to your writing where the is the constant struggle between that informal style of a blog as well as carefully crafted language and sentences to accurately convey the message. I think I did an especially good job of this in my past post titled “Bacterial Communication.” There could have been a post riddled with complex terms and ideas that would have made sense to few but instead I chose to use a more dynamic voice to make the post more entertaining and dynamic instead of dense and dry which are commonly associated with scientific topics because of complex terms.
I still don’t enjoy blogging as a means of communication. It merges the public and private lives too much in my opinion. But, no matter how much I would rather not blog, I still realize that if I want to get better at communicating with others through writing I need to practice, and blogging is helping me practice. It’s like how at a young age parents are always telling their kids to eat their vegetables. No matter how much you may dislike the taste or texture, you must eat them anyway because they are good for you.
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