CRD701: History and Theory of Communication Technology

Note: I started skimming through some of the other blogs and saw a debate between Jordan, David, Jason, Matt, and maybe others; I have decided to steer clear of this debate altogether, mostly due to a self-perceived ignorance on the topic. Hopefullly I will have some relevant input into the discussion if it comes in class, but otherwise, I'll let you all figure that one out. Have fun with that, guys.

So anyways. Briggs & Burke (2002) give us an overview of various transportation and communication technologies that emerged during the 19th and 20th century, such as trains, steam-powered ships, mail, telegraphy, telephones, and gramaphones, and they also discuss how the interplay of entrepreneurs, businesses, and governmental bodies shaped the development and employment of these devices. A few topics were interesting to me in this discussion. They note that the first telephone worked as a means only for one-way communication: you could speak into it and someone at the other end heard something, without being able to talk back, though Bell and other figured out two-way communication quickly thereafter. Bell's first patent application "was described as 'an improvement in telegraphy'" (cited in Briggs & Burke, 2002). While adding speech to the message was certainly innovative, what I find interesting is that today we actually want to use one-way communication in many situations. While some may consider two-way communication better than one-way communication--such discussions stretch back to Plato's chastisement of writing--we relish the means for one-way communication new media provide us. Consider emails, or even texting.  I admit I initially didn't understand why people liked texting: I figured, if you have a cell phone and can just talk to the person in two-way conversation, why would you want to text? If he/she doesn't understand the message, at least over the phone he/she can ask for clarification immediately. However, now I've started texting (mostly because others text me all the time) because I don't have the time, or sometimes energy (wow) for a phone conversation. What's more, since Jamie introduced our class to SlyDial, I have to admit I've used it several times already--it's progammed into my phone. So I guess my point here would be that while we might be tempted to look at telegraphy (and one-way communication as a whole) as simply an inferior technology to the telephone (two-way communication), we should evaluate the effectiveness of each based on the purpose of your communication.

Briggs & Burke and Marvin (1988), like Bruno Latour (2002), both stress that while we often think of the history of technology, and by extension I will add science, as progressing in an inevitable, linear direction--progress--its trajectory is not necessarily predetermined.  As Marvin suggests, we often see the past as an "undeveloped" version of our current world: we see it as inferior to our own technologically speaking but getting closer and closer to the ideal world we live in. We often do not consider how the trajectory could have went in many other directions based on what discoveries were made, the contextual factors that facilitated their discovery, and the rhetorical "selling" of these technologies to the public (as Matt notes). So we shouldn't think of our current state as a necessary world in a given, determined, successive chain of compossible worlds, as Leibnitz would have us do. Instead could we see the history of technology as a virtual state or world of potentials, a la Deleuze, actualized in one of many different ways that by our actions, then leading to other possible virtualities remaining to be actualized by us again in new ways?  Imagine, for instance, if electricity had not been discovered, or if its discovery had come much later. Might we have continued to toy around with steam technology?  There's an entire subset of science fiction which explores another possible world where steam technology rules the day, where we have not discovered electricity. Yet the linearity/progress mantra continues to this day, even through our perceptions of the future, rooted in the present world we know--we often see it as a "fancier version" of the present, as Marvin puts it (p. 190). New media studies focuses on digital technology, but will we still call our area new media studies if a new technology we didn't even anticipate supplants the digital, completely changing the trajectory of technological studies yet again (new virtualities, new actualizations from these virtualities)? Just a thought.

And some concluding thoughts on our other authors for this week. Schilvelbusch (1986) discusses the "panoramic theory" for the perceptual change occurring for train travelers and details the fears and discomforts felt by these travelers. I won't get into my issues with the psychoanalytic interpretations of their subjective experiences--like with phone conversations, I just don't have the energy for it right now. I am more curious, however, about his discussion of the optical and cerebral strain people professed to experience while reading books on trains. He suggests this led more people to read newspapers, not books, on trains. What exactly is the explanation for this phenomena, or is it just coincidental that sales for newspapers increased in proportion to books? Most of his chapter discusses how it may be disorienting initially for passengers to try to look at the landscapes passing by as they would stationary scenes. But he doesn't really explain what this has to do with reading a book, which is a stationary object (at least relative to the person). Why would this processes involved in reading be any different on a train than when sitting at home? I am merely arguing trying to point out here that Schilvelbusch hasn't made a case for a qualitatively different reading experience on the train.

Stubbs (2003) looks at telegraphic fiction, exploring how the virtual world for telegraphers, just like for internet users, is not necessarily disconnected from the meatspace. It's interesting to me that novelists considered the relationship between the physical and virtual worlds and selves back then: characters in the novels, acting through virtual selves, have interactions that lead them to relationships in the physical world. An important difference I would note is that today we know that people really do form relationships through the virtual world, be it chat rooms, online game playing, etc., that lead to romantic relationships in the physical world. Did the same happen for telegraphers, or was this just a hypothetical situation considered by a few authors Stubbs found? Was it ever a reality, like we see today, or merely fiction?