CRD701: History and Theory of Communication Technology

In our readings on mobility during week three, Sheller and Urry taught us mobility relies heavily on the consistency of immobility. This week, Hayles (1999) articulates a similar lesson: ?The efficacy of information depends on a highly articulated material base. Without such a base, from rapid transportation systems to fiber-optic cables, information becomes much more marginal in its ability to affect outcomes in the material world. Ironically, once this base is in place, the perceived primacy of information over materiality obscures the importance of the very infrastructures that make information valuable.? (p. 72, emphasis in original). In many cases, information is a commodity with a limited shelf life. Hayles offers the example of war-time communication, in which ?It matters little what information one has if a message can move only as fast as a horse can run, for by the time it arrives at its destination, its usefulness often has passed? (p. 72). Today AT&T markets this need for immediacy in a series of commercials in which a non-AT&T user misses vital information because his or her phone did not have reception (See examples: Phelps Phan, Basketball, Dad and Dillweed).

Post World War II, Wiener (1954) calls for scientists to take greater responsibility for the consequences of their work. His wartime efforts in antiaircraft defense led Wiener to cybernetics, the study of communication and control in animal and machine. By likening the human nervous system to a computer, he was able to develop ways to ?condition? a computer. Wiener poses the question: ?Is a man likely to use better emergency judgment than a machine? The answer is no. The reason for that is this: Any emergency you can think of, you can provide for in your computing and control apparatus? (p. 70). The reason we have fire drills is to condition ourselves to act appropriately in an emergency. By practicing rounding up everyone in the building, calmly exiting via the staircase and waiting on the front lawn for help to arrive, the logic is we will be able to do these actions during an actual emergency. ?When you have simplified a task by reducing it to a routine of consecutive procedures, you have done the same sort of thing that you need to do to put the task on a tape and run the procedure by a completely automatic machine,? Wiener writes (p. 71). While a human may work reflexively to exit a building during a fire, he or she may also forget all previous training as a result extreme duress. A computer, however, will function perfectly under strenuous conditions because it is just following a list of pre-programmed commands, eliminating the human capacity for error.

Hobart & Schiffman (1988) continue the comparison between humans and computers: ?Before they were performed by inanimate machines, humans carried out information transfers, we can even say mechanically. Humans process information, move it around, make it proceed from one place to another, often according to instructional rules and maps provided? (p. 205). Computers work by reading symbols, assigned specific functions by a human programmer. The symbols themselves are largely meaningless. ?Yet,? Hobart & Schiffman write, ?bound together in logical strings and operations these microcosmic bits begin to acquire patterned shape or form. As they do, information ? understood as the encoded content or ?stuff? of our exchanges with the world ? emerges from rules and from the movement of symbols in accordance with them ? (p. 203). The authors detail the work of the two ?principal architects of the new information age? ? Alan Turing and John von Neumann (p. 204). Turing?s computer worked by using algorithms, reacting based on the symbols present at any given time. Keeping with the computer as human theme, Turing referred to the operations his computer was able to perform as its ?state of mind? (p. 214). Von Neumann expanded on Turing?s design and ?detailed an overall plan for the logical and sequential operations of the computer. To this end he developed the ?flow diagram,? which charts the course of information transfers and operations among the machine's different parts? (p. 220). Essentially, von Neumann developed a way to make the computer more like the human nervous system, giving it the ability to make complex logical arguments based on the organization of information.

Lupton (2007) moves beyond the human-computer comparison to the emotional and embodied relationship humans have with their computers. I fully admit to talking to computers and printers as though they were people, and will sometimes stroke a printer or monitor to encourage the machine to do as I command. I also fully agree with Lupton?s accusation that the copy machine is an evil being, plotting to misbehave the minute you really need it. The part of Lupton?s article I found most interesting, however, is her brief examination of the viral metaphor. She explains, ?Similar cultural meanings are attached to the viral infection of computers as associated with human illness, and in particular, the viral illness of HIV/AIDS. That is, there are a series of discourses that suggest that computers which malfunction due to ?viral contamination? have allowed themselves to become permeable, often via the indiscrete and ?promiscuous? behaviour of their users? (p. 99). This is actually a strong metaphor, as we know we need to be careful in choosing the computers and networks with which we interact, but are sometimes willing to accept risk in exchange for the momentary pleasure of viewing a video or downloading a file from an unknown source.