Communications…a few definitions:

 

• The imparting or exchanging of information means of connection between people or places, in particular

• social contact, whether through personal, technology or art

• Communication is giving, receiving or exchanging ideas, information, signals or messages through appropriate media, enabling individuals or groups to persuade, to seek information, to give information or to express emotions.

 

 

History:

• Communication began with language.

 

• The history of communication is mankind's search for ways to improve upon shouting

 

• Next we learned to write/read- no longer had to shout, you just had to have someone who could run fast!

 

1450’s- Guttenberg invents the printing press

• Sparked major change in the way people learned

• No longer framed by authorities

• books allowed access to knowledge and viewpoints

 

1690’s – 1800’s Newspapers begin development

 

1830’s invention of the Telegraph allows for more widespread news and information-The telegraph is first technology to enable messages to move faster than human travel

 

1848 – Wire services

 

1886 – Cosmopolitan Magazine launched

• A more refined audience

 

1850’s- Sound Recording and Music

 

1887- Edison improves

• Berliner creates the flat discs “records” for storage

 

1940’s – Audio tape(reel to reel)

 

 1960’s- portable Cassette tapes

 

1970’s- Analog recording

 

1983- Digital recording- Compact Discs

 

1992 – MP3

 

1999- File Sharing

 

1890-1920’s-Radio

• Marconi creates wireless telegraph

• 1919- RCA is born(Radio Corporation of America)

• 1920-40- Golden Age of Radio

  • ’s Fireside Chats

  • Radio brings news, entertainment and arts into homes

 

1890’s-Movies

• Thomas Edison – kinetoscope(individual viewing)

• By 1910 – Hollywood Studio System was born

       

Television/Cable

 

• 1927- Philo Farnsworth

• 1930’s-NTSC(National Television Systems Committee)-compromised of engineers, inventors and network executives create technical standards

• After WWII(1945) TV became commonplace in homes

• During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing public opinion

 

 The INTERNET!!

• Began with the US Defense Department Advanced Research Project Agency(ARPA) 1958

  • Arpanet – military and academic researchers to communicate on a distributed  network system

• 1970's-1990’s- microprocessors, fiber-optic cable

• 1999- Internet is primarily email and small web page display

  • Tim Berners-Lee – HTML language

    • Allowed for World Wide Web to “talk” to each other

• 2005 – expands into a social network

 

Technology: A Definition

 

• The sum of the methods by which a social group provides itself with the material objects of their civilization.

• "Every generation writes its own history"   Carl Becker, American Historian

 

Technology and society or technology and culture refers to cyclical co-dependence, co-influence, co-production of technology and society upon the other (technology upon culture, and vice versa). This synergistic relationship occurred from the dawn of humankind, with the invention of simple tools and continues into modern technologies such as the printing press and computer.

 

Theories of Technology and Society:

 

Social Construction:

• The idea that technologies succeed or fail (or emerge at all) partly because of the political strategies employed by "actors"-- individuals, groups, and organizations--that have conflicting or complementary interests in particular out comes.

 

• both the path of innovation and the consequences of technology for humans are strongly if not entirely shaped by society itself, through the influence of culture, politics, economic arrangements, and the like.

 

Technological Determinism:

• Society’s technology determines its cultural values, social structure, or history

• The belief in technology as a key governing force in society

• The belief that social progress is driven by technological innovation, which in turn follows an “inevitable” course

• The idea that technological development determines social change

• The belief that technical forces determine social and cultural changes

•  Technology determines history”

 

Example: https://vimeo.com/132382869