Friday, December 2, 2011

Communications In A Modern World: How Instant Connections Have Changed Humanity

By Bruce Jopples


It is mind-boggling how easily communications in a modern world have shifted. This reality is often a bit scary. Citizens living in the Western and Eastern civilizations have access to tools very similar in function to those of the nineteenth century. Their speed and openness in design is having a spreading impact on how we communicate.

People living in 1860 had access to information sharing tools very similar to the ones we have today. A person living in Boston could send a message to someone in Cleveland with a few taps on a telegraph wire. Two kids living on the same street could talk all night on a telephone made up of a pair of soup cans tied to a piece of string. Smoke from a signal fire could be used to send a message to someone several miles away. The ability to quickly send brief messages across long distances is not purely modern.

People did temporarily abandon the idea in the twentieth century. More and more of them turned to mass media for information about the universe. A telephone was a more personal way to chat with someone and made the telegraph machine obsolete. Most folks got their news not from a campfire but from television news shows, sponsored by corporations.

More and more often, we turned to corporate owned or run mechanisms to share information with each other. Communications since then have started to move on.

If you want to send someone a message in 2011, you once again have instant communication tools at your disposal. The Internet, once a place where corporations displayed information and school kids toured the White House, is now a global communication hub. The influence of that hub has spread beyond social media sites. It now extends to corporate sites. Every successful business web site offers free, sharable information and a way to contact customer service. An unhappy customer or client can push a few keys and instantly tell everyone why he does not like you.

Cell phones have made long distance charges almost obsolete. You can now instantly access the Internet on your phone as well. The world can be researched and talked about at any time, from anywhere.

If the methods of communication in a modern world have not changed the way you present yourself and your message, they should. From this point on it is safe to assume that everything and anything you type into a phone or computer might eventually be public knowledge. Public knowledge is quickly judged, copied and shared with all members of the public. The messages you put out need to be ready for that audience.




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