CRD701: History and Theory of Communication Technology

?Industry and communications could transform history,? write Briggs and Burke (2002, p. 219). This week?s reading are devoted to how the two intersect in the 19th and 20th centuries to do just that. As we touched on last week, with the introduction of the railway came railway literature. Schivelbusch (1986) explores this in detail, explaining how upper class Europeans adjusted to traveling by rail instead of stagecoach: ?Contemporary texts that compare the new travel experience with the traditional one demonstrate how that stimulus increase produced by increased velocity is experienced as stressful. The speed causes objects to escape from one?s gaze, but one nevertheless keeps on trying to grasp them? (p. 57). Essentially, the train moved too rapidly for passengers to view the scenery with any comprehension. Schivelbusch continues, ?Reading while traveling became almost obligatory. The dissolution of reality and its resurrection as panorama thus became agents for the total emancipation from the traversed landscape: the traveler's gaze could then move into an imaginary surrogate landscape, that of his book? (p. 64). Reading also emerged on the railway in the same way contemporaries may use iPods on city buses ? to avoid interaction with fellow passengers. ?The travelers in the train compartment did not know what to do with each other, and reading became a surrogate for the communication that no longer took place? (p. 67). Even when maintaining isolation in rail cars posed a threat to personal safety (on trains, no one can hear you scream), Europeans still wished to be left alone (p. 85).

Marvin (1988) offers an ode to the electric light and examines its role in the social construction of 20th century mass media. Her article reminds me of an episode from Family Guy that shows an old man flicking a lamp on and off at ?The Miracle of Electricity? exhibit. ?What, you don't think this is amazing?? he exclaims to passersby. ?When I saw this at the 1904 World's Fair, I nearly crapped my pants!? ?That we no longer remember the excitement of electric light spectacles testifies both to the fact that mass communication was implemented more directly in other forms and to the tendency of every age to read history backward from the present,? Marvin writes (p. 154). There is no need to announce election results by searchlight across the sky when we have television, radio and the Internet. Electric light as a public spectacle also assumed mass audiences congregated outdoors, ready to receive the illuminated message. Like Europeans on trains, ?contemporary mass audiences congregate mostly indoors and not together? (p. 189). Despite the mass prefix, media like television, radio and the Internet are typically enjoyed privately or in small groups.

Sometimes called the Victorian Internet, Stubbs (2003) studies the telegraph as what Sherry Turkle would term a laboratory for conducting identity experiments (p. 91). On the telegraph, ?there was no way to verify definitively the identity of a given sender,? Stubbs writes. ?The result was a form of anonymity analogous to that enabled by the internet: On the telegraph circuit, it was theoretically possible to misrepresent oneself, to engage in a covert form of masquerade, trying on a new body and a new social identity? (p. 92, emphasis in original). Should I be an old maid with red hair in my physical form, the telegraph can provide the perfect disguise. Telegraphic fiction ? stories written by and for telegraph operators ? portrays this use of ?technology as a tool of masquerade? (p. 93).

Briggs and Burke (2002) provide a hefty overview of communications technologies, from the railway to the gramophone. Briefly, the postcard was first introduced in Austria in 1869 and raised questions regarding privacy. ?Why write private information on an open piece of cardboard that might be read by half a dozen persons before it reached its destination?? the authors ask (p. 130). In my experience, I usually arrived home before my postcard did, making ?wish you were here? a pointless expression. Rather than a means to communicate information, postcards function more as memorabilia (My friend?s parents bought postcards during their visit to Auschwitz).

Finally, I feel the need to clarify something Briggs and Burke say about the public interest requirement imposed on broadcasters by the Radio Act of 1927. The authors offer Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover?s remark it was ?inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service and for news and for entertainment and education, for vital commercial purposes to be drowned in advertising chatter? (p. 162). They then appear to assert that the devil advertising somehow cheated the American public by asking broadcasters to serve the public interest rather than perform a public service. In my humble opinion, not one broadcaster in the history of radio or television can define what public interest means, and it is doubtful they could do the same for public service. While television stations do have specific requirements for children?s programming, there is very little oversight into what constitutes serving the public interest. Broadcasters want to keep it that way, too, vehemently opposing an FCC idea to enhance localism requirements.